Believe it or not a downsized version of the extremely popular G-Wagen is currently in the works and would go on sale in a few years. Amongst other big announcements made at the 2023 IAA Munich, Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius confirmed reports of a smaller G-Class currently under development. Describing it as a “Little G,” the Swedish-German executive also said that the model will be fully electric. While we have seen many different versions of the iconic G-Class ever since it debuted more than 4 decades ago, nobody really expected Mercedes to build a smaller, arguably more practical version of the luxury SUV. After all, it’s the bad-boy, gangster image of the G-Class that has turned it into one of the most desirable automobiles currently on sale.
There’s no information on the looks and design of the upcoming baby G-Wagen. All Mercedes showed was a design sketch when the announcement was made, which suggests it will retain the silhouette of the standard G-Wagen. Källenius also refused to reveal the timeline of its launch in the market. All he said was the downsized G-Wagen will have “some very big shoes to fill.” However, the German automaker has hinted that the smaller G-Class is being developed as a fun-to-drive vehicle both on and off-road.
The news of a baby G-Wagen was originally leaked by German business paper Handelsblatt back in February of this year. Motor1 reports that the smaller G-Wagen will go on sale in 2026 and will be underpinned by the same MMA architecture as the Concept CLA Class revealed at IAA this week. Given the fact that it’s going to be a fully electric model, we are not surprised that it would feature a unibody construction instead of a body-n-frame platform like the standard G-Wagen. It’ll be interesting to see how fans of the iconic SUV are going to react to a smaller G-Class SUV. But it makes sense for Mercedes to utilize the hype around the G-Wagen and experiment with more variants. Last year, the German manufacturer had to stop taking fresh orders after it had managed to sell all planned units till 2025. An EV version of the G-Class is also slated for a launch next year.
Note – Images used are of the Mercedes G Wagen.
