The Mercedes-Benz G-Class remains off limits and unavailable to order for the foreseeable future – and the company doesn’t know the vehicle will go back on sale.
Australians looking to place an order for a Mercedes-Benz G-Class face an indefinite wait if they are not already in the queue.
The German car maker says it does not know when it will reopen orders, or when the backlog will be cleared.
“It’s not something we often look at any more, because we haven’t opened the books,” said Mercedes-Benz Australia spokesman Jerry Stamoulis.
While Mr Stamoulis did not specify the current wait time, he said it was significantly longer than 12 months.
“For people who are interested in a G-Class, speak to their dealer. Because sometimes things might change for other people,” said Mr Stamoulis.
The Mercedes-Benz G-Class is in a production bottleneck because the vehicle is predominantly hand-made – by the same company that did the engineering and development of the iconic off-roader, Magna Steyr in Austria – and production cannot be easily ramped-up to meet the surge in demand.
There were 41,174 examples of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class delivered globally in 2021, according to website Motor1.
Closer to home, Mercedes-Benz delivered 427 examples of the G-Class to Australian customers in 2022, which was down 28 per cent from 594 the previous year according to industry statistician VFACTS.
The Mercedes-Benz G-Class is only available in Australia in the high-performance G63 AMG specification, which is listed from $365,900 before on-road costs.
For those waiting to place an order locally, the outlook remains unclear.
“I’m not sure exactly what the backlog is, but let’s say this: If it was to drop to 12 months, then we would re-open the order books.” said Mr Stamoulis.
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