Hot on the bumpers of the New York Auto Show, the oddball Mercedes-Benz G-Class officially shows its ever-so-slightly redesigned face to the world. As we’ve discussed previously, it looks a whole lot like last year’s model, but distinguishing tweaks outside include the dashes of LEDs underneath the headlights and new side mirrors.
The momentous advances have come inside and under the hood. The 612-horsepower, 738-pound-foot twin-turbo V12 G65 AMG is now a reality along with a 544-hp, twin-turbo V8 G63, both of them sitting above a naturally aspirated 5.5-liter V8 in the carryover G550 (the G500 in Europe) and a diesel V6 in the Bluetec G350. Don’t get your hopes up for that G65, though – Mercedes-Benz has confirmed to Autoblog that the V12 monster will not be coming to the United States.
Inside, the dash and console get a thorough resculpture, with bezeled dials in the cluster and discrete control pods replacing the flat planes in the previous model. Additional comfort and luxury options can be checked if one wishes for radar-based cruise control, Blind Spot Assist and Parktronic. The ESP programming has even been reworked to play nicely with trailers.
The 2013 G-Class will be available at European dealerships in June with U.S. sales to follow in August. Prices for our market haven’t been released just yet, but we do know that the European version will start at €85,311 for the G350, which we also won’t get (along with the cabriolet models). The current G550 starts at $107,000, so you should plan on adding a few grand to that to get in the 2013-model-year’s big, square door.
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