10 photos
My mom — a retired first-grade teacher born, raised and still living in suburban West Michigan — loves her Ford Focus SEL. But now she wants a balls-out, body-on-frame military truck that looks like it was designed by a steroidal architect locked in a room with a block of granite, a hammer and chisel, an eight ball of coke and a lot of chrome. So, to paraphrase: like son, like mother.
Mom and Dad came to NYC for a long weekend. To some thirtysomethings this would seem like a huge burden. But, because I (a) love spending time with my folks and (b) make questionable decisions, instead it was an opportunity to very politely ask Mercedes-Benz to loan me their $150,000, 563-horsepower, 6.5-foot-tall, 5.5-seconds-to-60 bank vault on 20-inch wheels. Far as I know, my mom had never ridden shotgun in a Teutonic luxury truck dressed in hell-beast’s clothing.
And since I had never driven one, it was the perfect opportunity to enlist my mom to help with this review. Here’s everything she said, with some additional notes from her know-it-all son.
“When you beeped the horn and I saw [the G63] for the first time I said, ‘Oh my god, holy shit, look at that!’ I couldn’t believe it. I was expecting a car, not a tank. I didn’t know what to think of it. Just that I didn’t expect this. I love it!”
Actually, I didn’t honk. When my parents stepped out of the coffee shop where we were meeting I simply revved the 5.5-liter V8 to get their attention. The G63’s twin-turbo V8 utilizes side-exit exhausts, which is psychotic, and, along with nearly shattering an entire block’s worth of windows, brought a huge grin to mom’s face.
The G63 is so, so fun to drive — that is, once you grow accustomed to not being able to turn the tall, heavy behemoth at more than, say, 12 mph. The truck’s track is relatively narrow for its height, producing a decidedly top-heavy feel from behind the wheel. So instead of carving corners, I took Mom (and Dad — but today is about Mom) on a nice, leisurely drive through the Hudson River Valley on a rainy Sunday afternoon, unashamedly scaring all wildlife within a 40-mile radius back into hibernation.
