GarageFeature
The Mercedes-AMG G65: A V12 Relic of Excess, and Why I’m Buying One
When nothing makes sense, sometimes excess is the only answer.
01The Allure of the Unnecessary
There are rational purchases. There are even emotional purchases. And then there’s the Mercedes-AMG G65—a purchase that defies all logic, reason, and common sense.
This isn’t a car. It’s an act of defiance, a rolling contradiction, a 6,000-pound middle finger to efficiency and modernity. It was a mistake—one that Mercedes had the sheer audacity to build anyway.
A twin-turbo V12 inside a military-grade brick—an engine best suited for a flagship grand tourer, shoved into a box on wheels with aerodynamics borrowed from an industrial freezer. A vehicle engineered in a time when the Cold War was still a thing, yet somehow sold to the kind of people who measure their self-worth in property taxes.
The Mercedes-AMG G65 should not exist.
And yet, here I am, about to buy one.
Image: Mercedez-Benz USA
02Why Now? Why the G65?
A well-rounded garage needs balance. Some people think that means a sports car, a practical car, and something vintage for the weekends. I have my own interpretation:
• 2024 718 Cayman GTS 4.0 – The daily driver, the purist’s Porsche, the distilled essence of Stuttgart perfection.
• Macan Base – Because even the most stubborn enthusiast needs an all-rounder.
• E46 M3 – My forever car, owned since 2003, a monument to the golden era of BMW M.
• And the G65? – The wildcard. The absurdity. The rolling declaration that sometimes, you buy a car just because it makes you laugh.
There’s no practical reason to own a G65.
Which is precisely why it’s perfect.
03A Military Past and a Beverly Hills Future
To understand why the G65 exists, you have to understand where the G-Wagen came from.
The Gelandewagen (literally “cross-country vehicle” in German) was never meant for Hollywood parking lots. It was conceived in 1979, co-developed by Mercedes-Benz and Steyr-Daimler-Puch to be a military utility vehicle.
It was built to storm war zones, to crawl over impossible terrain, to be driven by people who had bigger concerns than Bluetooth connectivity.
Image: Mercedes-Benz
And for years, that’s what it was. The early civilian models were basic, functional, and brutal—hose-out interiors, manual everything, designed to be repaired in the field with whatever tools you had on hand.
Then, something happened.
Somewhere in the early ‘90s, the G-Wagen’s raw presence caught the attention of the wealthy and eccentric. The first ones started trickling into Beverly Hills and Monaco as gray-market imports, and suddenly, Mercedes realized that they had accidentally built the world’s most status-drenched SUV.
By the time it was officially brought to the U.S. in 2002, it was already an icon. The rich didn’t care that it had the aerodynamics of a warehouse. They didn’t care that it drove like a medieval siege tower. What mattered was that it was different, and in a world where everyone is trying to one-up each other, that was enough.
It became a power move—one that AMG decided to take to an insane extreme.
04The G65: The Most Unnecessary AMG Ever Made
By 2016, AMG had already given us the G63, which was ridiculous enough—a twin-turbo V8 stuffed into an off-roader that had no business being that fast.
But no. That wasn’t enough.
Someone, somewhere, decided: “Let’s put a V12 in it.”
The result? The G65 AMG.
• 6.0L twin-turbocharged V12
• 621 horsepower
• 738 lb-ft of torque
• 5,700 lbs of unnecessary brilliance
That is a very pretty M275 V12 engine. Image: Mercedez-Benz USA
A 5.5-second 0-60 time in something that was originally designed to transport military equipment across deserts and mountains.
It is, without exaggeration, the most ridiculously excessive AMG vehicle ever made.
And I love it.
05What It’s Like to Drive the G65
Hilarious. Terrifying. Unhinged.
The G65 is not a high-performance SUV in the modern sense. It’s not a Lamborghini Urus or a Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT. It doesn’t try to be.
It doesn’t carve corners. It doesn’t give you feedback through the steering wheel. It just moves with an unshakable, unstoppable presence.
I could do without the diamond quilting, but whatever. Image Credit: Mercedes-Benz USA
The experience behind the wheel?
• The steering – Artificially heavy, yet hilariously vague. You don’t steer the G65. You suggest a direction and it considers your input.
• The suspension – Boat-like. Bouncy. Feels like piloting a battleship through suburban streets.
• The sound – Surprisingly muted. A G63 V8 actually sounds better. But somehow, the sheer absurdity of what’s happening makes that irrelevant.
• The speed – It’s fast, but not in the way you expect. It’s not a push you back in your seat kind of speed. It’s a crush you with sheer inertia kind of speed. A sense that you will arrive at your destination whether you want to or not.
It is not graceful. It is not refined.
But it is, in its own way, perfect.
06Why the G65 is a Smart Buy at $90K
When new, the G65 cost an absurd $220,000.
Today, you can find them between $80K and $120K, depending on mileage and condition.
At this price point, the G65 is a better buy than almost anything else in the ultra-luxury SUV world:
• A new G63? $200K+ with dealer markups.
• A Lamborghini Urus? $230K+, and already starting to feel overexposed.
• An Aston Martin DBX? A perfectly competent SUV that no one will remember in five years.
But the G65? The V12 era is over. This is one of the last. The world is moving toward downsized turbo engines, hybrid drivetrains, and quiet, soulless efficiency.
Twelve-cylinder lunacy will never happen again.
07Final Thought: The G65 is the Last of Its Kind
This is not a perfect car.
It is too heavy, too expensive, too compromised.
It drives like an armored personnel carrier, gets single-digit fuel economy, and makes zero sense in the modern world.
But that’s exactly why it’s worth owning.
Because not everything has to make sense.
Some things should exist just because they can.
Some cars should be big, dumb, excessive tributes to power and presence.
Some cars should remind us that not everything needs to be optimized, efficient, or rational.
And that’s why, against all logic, against all reason, a V12-powered, twin-turbo, 6,000-pound German brick will soon be sitting in my garage.
Yours in automotive excess,
Dr. Chicane
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Notes
First published on 2 February 2025 on the Studio Chicane Substack (original post). The text is preserved as it appeared.