Expedition Motor Company’s Restored G-Wagens Are Practically Perfect in Every Way

If Mary Poppins wanted a vintage Mercedes-Benz off-roader, this is where she’d shop.

emc expedition motor company mercedes benz g wagen wolf gelandewagen

Published March 6, 2022

If you’ve ever ventured to one of the tonier beach towns of America — your Nantuckets, your Hamptons, your Newports (Beach or otherwise), your Vineyards Martha — odds are good you’ve seen a fair number of very nice open-top vintage off-roaders tooling around. Old-school Land Rover Defenders are the most obvious example of this trend, but keep your eyes peeled and you’re liable to see a decent number of Jeep Wranglers and CJs, an occasional Ford Bronco, maybe even an International Scout or Chevy Blazer if you’re lucky.

One type of boxy soft-top SUV from days of yore you aren’t too likely to catch a glimpse of, however: the Mercedes-Benz Gelandewagen. Oh, you’ll probably see plenty of new G-wagens — the four-door, V8-powered beasties that have been a staple of hip urban locales and super-bougie suburbs since M-B USA began officially selling them here about a decade and a half ago. But the older, more varied versions — the ones with different wheelbases and powerplants that were largely forbidden fruit for Americans for roughly three decades — are extremely rare, cursed — or blessed — to obscurity by their gray-market status and less-luxurious traits.

But like nature, the car world abhors a vacuum. So with the market for boxy off-roaders booming and restomod Land Rover Defender builders coming out of the woodwork in recent years, it’s not too surprising that someone would try and make old-fashioned Gelandewagens into new-fashioned oceanfront lifestyle machines.

And that’s exactly what Expedition Motor Company is aiming to do.

“You have to have the right lifestyle for [an EMC G-wagen]”

emc expedition motor company mercedes benz g wagen wolf

That’s straight from the mouth of EMC founder Alex Levin, who has a little experience with Gelandewagens; while his company has only been in existence for a couple years, his fate has been tied to the G-wagen since he first had the chance to steer one at age five.

The company got its start after Levin imported a couple of aged G-wagens for himself, only to realize they were in need of stem-to-stern restorations. He pulled together a team to pull it off, but, he says, then realized the real business — “or fun,” as he put it — was taking the restorations beyond the levels of quality other people were doing with aging Gelandewagens.

As it turned out, there was a reason no one was doing that. “I quickly realized not a lot of people were stupid enough to do that, because of the hours involved,” Levin says. He’s not kidding: each EMC Wolf takes around 1,100 hours of labor to progress from soup to nuts — part of the reason the company has only made around 80 examples so far, as well as part of the reason there’s a six-month wait for each new one.

The company specializes in restoring 250 GD Wolf models — and when I say specializes, I mean it, because that’s all the company does. Every EMC G-wagen is a two-door soft-top model with a diesel engine under its hood. Until recently, the company didn’t even build any with automatic transmissions; they only changed their mind after a disabled veteran requested one, and have since built a half-dozen slushbox models.

Don’t bother asking for an LS V8 under the hood, or an electric motor, or anything like that — EMC isn’t interested in building, in Levin’s words, “spaceships.” “I’m not a big option guy,” he says.

Attention to detail reigns supreme at EMC

EMC’s commitment to making high-quality vehicles shines through in ways big and small. Clamber inside, and after closing the solid door with that iconic G-wagen thunk, you’ll find yourself surrounded with what looks like the interior of a car that just time-traveled here from the early ’90s. The attention to detail is practically Singer-esque — the craftsmanship impeccable, the fit-and-finish remarkable. Even a layperson can appreciate the production-car-level quality of the leather trim, or the smooth action with which the controls move through their motions.

Much of the more impressive changes are harder to spot at a glance — especially outside. The paintwork looks good at a glance — but look harder, and you’ll see it’s not just good, it’s concours-quality great. The screws holding everything together are stainless steel; in fact, just about everything made of steel is stainless, an expensive choice the company made on purpose to make the machine look better and last longer.

Beneath it all, however, still lies the basic architecture that has made the G-Class such a legend. “They don’t really break,” says Bill Thomas, an automotive technician who worked for the corporate offices of Nissan, Infiniti and Ferrari before branching out to start his own company, William Thomas Roadsters, and becoming part of EMC. “They’re very overbuilt.”

Like their NATO origins, EMC’s G-wagens are a Transatlantic alliance

They’re overbuilt, of course, because these G-wagens were made to keep up with Abrams tanks and A-10 Warthogs fighting to keep the Soviet Union from overthrowing West Germany. Every Wolf the company rebuilds is sourced from the military surplus and cast-offs of one piece of the NATO alliance or another — mostly Germany, but also occasionally places like Austria or Canada — and made between 1990 and 1993.

Once it’s been found and checked out to make sure it’s a good candidate for restoration, it’s sent off to the company’s European facility to be stripped down to its bones, inspected with a fine-tooth comb and restored with high-quality parts. From there, it heads across the Atlantic to EMC’s headquarters in Frenchtown, New Jersey, for final touches and a careful inspection to make sure everything works good as new — or, in many cases, better than new.

What’s it like to drive one of EMC’s G-Wagens?

It’s miles different from driving a new G-Class. Or any new car. Hell, it’s honestly unlike driving most 30-year-cars, due to a combination of factors from the exquisite craftsmanship to the Gelandewagen’s mil-spec roots to the fact that, despite coming from the early 1990s, the design’s age means you’re actually driving a nearly 50-year-old car.

Two quick stats to set the scene here:

An EMC 250 GD makes 91 horsepower and 114 lb-ft of torque.
It weighs around 5,500 pounds.

So as you might imagine, acceleration is…plodding. I drove a stick-shift model; technically, it has five forward gears, but the first is a super-short granny gear meant for off-roading, not street use. Second gear is the place to start, then. Build some revs, let off the clutch — gently and slowly, it’s not designed for a hard launch — and you’re off and rolling.

It’s a diesel, mind you, so it won’t rev too high. Thing is, there’s no tachometer, so you’re left to suss out when to shift by ear and feel. Surprisingly, that quickly becomes natural; I felt confident in the shift points after 10 or 15 minutes behind the wheel.

Working through the gears puts the 250GD in fifth by 40-45 miles per hour, where it’ll happily sit and cruise until the tank runs dry. 50-60 is fine, although with the top down (as it was on my drive) the wind noise quickly makes conversation hard, especially over the Bluetooth connection — something Levin stresses as a feature, not a bug. Past 60 mph, it starts to feel a tad light — which is fine, really, because the engine doesn’t have much more to give beyond that. (Levin says he’s seen 70 out of the truck on New Jersey highways, the thought of which leaves me slightly terrified.)

Turning and braking, likewise, are best performed judiciously; the latter requires ample planning time if coming down from high speed (though not so much as to ever feel unsafe), and the former requires plenty of the latter first. Slowing down also requires plenty of downshifting in order to make sure the diesel still has enough grunt to get going once you need to accelerate again.

But if you want to go fast, well, buy an AMG G63. EMC’s rigs are about taking your time and being immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of the world around you. With the top stowed, 30 miles per hour in the Wolf feels more exciting than 100 in a modern G-Class; the breeze licks at your hair and face, sunlight floods in from all angles, and all the nagging thoughts and worries of life seem to fly away in the wind. It’s vintage convertible living at its finest, with the added benefit of sitting high and proud on the road.

Granted, as with one of Singer Vehicle Design’s remastered Porsches, this sort of quality doesn’t come cheap. Levin says his company’s wares start around $120,000 — around the same as a brand-new G-Class (assuming you can find one at MSRP these days, of course).

For many folks, that sort of pricetag for a 30-year-old SUV with less than 100 horsepower likely seems absurd — even if it boasts the Three-Pointed Star on its grille and has been impeccably restored. But for anyone who’s looking to stand out from the Hampton Joneses or drive a piece of automotive history sure to impress those in the know, they’ll find a kindred spirit — and a unique ride — at EMC.

“I want to restore and repurpose these,” Levin says, “because if I don’t do it, a lot of these will wind up trashed.”