Edmunds Finds the G-Wagon Will Carry Much More Than It Says

The ideal shape for transporting items is a box. This is clear to anyone who has moved and found themselves surrounded by cardboard cubes. You can also see it with a freight train, with its long line of double-stacked containers. Sure, fluids and high-pressure gases are best stored in rounded shapes, but nothing beats a box when it comes to cargo. And few vehicles are as boxy as the G-Class, Mercedes-Benz’s most capable SUV.  

Thus, it’s a bit surprising when you check the specs and see that the G-Class has 37.3 or 38.1 cubic feet of cargo space behind the seats, depending on the drivetrain. For comparison, the smaller Honda CR-V claims 39.3 cubic feet behind the seats, and its competitor, the Hyundai Tucson, claims 38.7 cubic feet. How can this be? Edmunds.com aimed to find out, and Mercedes-Benz of Plano shares what they discovered. 

Translating cargo figures into actual cargo capacity is a regular feature of Edmunds.com. Recognizing that cubic foot measurements can be hard to visualize and often doesn’t tell the whole story. Their editor, James Riswick, has spent years filling vehicle trunks and cargo holds with a consistent set of luggage and travel items, then writing about the results. As a result, he has a good sense of what 34.8 cubic feet looks like, and the G-Class appears to offer significantly more space. 

As it turns out, Mercedes-Benz accurately measures cargo space up to the seatback. In most vehicles, that measurement is about the same height as an extending cargo cover. However, the very tall windows of the G-Class extend well below the rear seatbacks, and for a cargo cover to be effective, it cannot be higher than the lower edge of the rear windows. As a result, the cargo cover height is roughly 10 inches lower than the rear seatback. Based on experience, Riswick could see that all the luggage he could fit into the compact crossovers mentioned above (some of the largest in their class) would fit just fine underneath the cargo cover. These include (complete with his nicknames): 

Of course, most people, if they have a lot of things to transport, are not going to stop under the cargo cover, or even at the seatbacks. Who among us hasn’t stacked things to the headliner, at least on either side, leaving a corridor of space to still view behind you with the inside rearview mirror? And even that will not be necessary if you have a digital rearview mirror that can get the rear view from an external camera.   

Thus, Riswick stuffed about everything he had that was remotely travel-related into the G-Wagon, including a large cooler and a Lil’ Tykes Cozy Coupe kiddie car. After doing so, he still left room to use the standard rearview mirror. He stated that this was about the same amount of cargo he could fit into a Toyota 4Runner, which has a cargo capacity of 48.4 cubic feet, so the G-Wagon’s effective cargo space was likely in that range.  

So, if the cargo figures for the G-Wagon seem unusually small, now you know why. One must credit Mercedes-Benz for sticking to its protocol rather than being swayed by salesmanship, but they probably understand that the space of the G-Wagon can speak for itself. Bountiful cargo space is likely one of the least remarkable things about the G-Wagon. Visit Ewing Mercedes-Benz of Plano, which has the most extensive inventory of Mercedes-Benz models in the country, to explore all facets of the G-Wagon’s remarkable capability.