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The Designory
2002 Mercedes-Benz G-Class Introduction
It’s 2001. Latte lumberjacks all over the US are on their second or third SUV. Manufacturers are scrambling to offer more luxurious SUVs by adding wood and lots of chrome. It’s the right time for Mercedes-Benz to leapfrog the whole segment by offering the luxurious and ultra-capable G-Class in the US.
The challenges for us were many: The G-Class looked like a military vehicle from the cold-war era, so it was potentially less glamorous; nobody actually goes off-road in their SUVs, so standard images of SUVs climbing rocks in the desert weren’t a very interesting prospect; the G-Class offered no variety of trim levels, so the book was potentially monotonous; and the G-Class came out at the same time as the SL-Class, which heightened interest in stylishness, so the G-Class had to overcome possibly being considered boring by comparison.
The solution arose from the way the vehicle was built. Most SUVs are based on just modifying previous car and truck designs, but the G-Class was designed from the ground up. We approached the brochure the same way. The G-Class deserved a book that featured a unique design. Instead of showing stereotypical situations that most SUVs never encounter, we went to the place where people actually use them: the city. The idea: “The first 100 days.” Descriptions of the first 100 days of ownership are at the same time 100 proposals for how to enjoy the versatile G-Class. The 100 days device also allowed the book to be an interesting read, rather than just a listing of different features and options.
We designed the piece with a frosted, hard-plastic protective cover to give the feeling that the G-Class was not just another SUV, but was designed to be rugged and prepared for the elements. The “city” look of the book combined with the somewhat militaristic look of the vehicle to create the feeling of the perfect SUV for the urban jungle. Happily, the entire first-year allocation of the G-Class was pre-ordered by July of 2002.
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