A Joy Ride With Ralph Nader
The car industry’s fiercest critic is taken for a spin in the most expensive S.U.V. ever made.
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The New York Times, October 31, 1999
[Read this article at The New York Times’s website]
The Mercedes Gelaendewagen is the fastest, most expensive and all-around most blazingest sport utility vehicle in the world, and when your faithful correspondent was recently offered the chance to drive one, he jumped at it. This is because your correspondent is most definitely not in league with the self-flagellating, I’m-perfectly-happy-with-my-Corolla-lying, NPR-pledge-week-donating S.U.V.-bashers who have made life unbearable, or at least mildly annoying, for the millions of red-blooded men who cruise the Main Streets of America in S.U.V.’s designed to ford wide rivers and haul sheep and goats.
I myself drive a Toreador Red Ford Explorer XLT, a rock-solid and capacious vehicle designed to meet any driving challenge, except for parking and backing up.
But it’s no Gelaendewagen.
This is why: the G-Wagen is a fearsome, black, box-framed behemoth that weighs almost three tons. It’s built like a tank (it started out as a German military vehicle), and it goes 0-to-1,000 in about two seconds. It is the Richard Wagner of S.U.V.’s. It also, by the way, costs $135,000, which includes a burled-walnut steering wheel, as well as floormats.
My G-Wagen was delivered to me by Michael Aumock of G.Wagen USA, the sole distributor of the 150 G-Wagens shipped to the United States each year. Aumock seemed nervous about handing over the keys. But after I executed what he called the finest parallel-parking job (“for a reporter”) he’d ever seen, he let me drive off alone in the G-Wagen.
I will admit to a certain ambivalence upon taking custody of a G-Wagen: I have a pronounced aversion to Teutonic vehicles of death. On the other hand, the G-Wagen goes really fast, and I like big things that go fast, even if they’re Wagnerian.
Before you label me some sort of Faludi-esque, wretched, he-man manque, let me state that I am actually quite content with my life, except for those rare moments when I would like it to be a bit more like Puff Daddy’s.
As soon as I left Aumock, I started driving really fast—100-miles-an-hour fast—and I wasn’t pulled over even once. What I found especially gratifying was that people noticed me: they waved, they gave me the thumbs-up and then, I suspect, they thought, “Jackass.”
But drawing attention to myself wasn’t the point of this test drive. The people at G-Wagen wish to broaden the appeal of their monster vehicle. Today, owners of G-Wagens are concentrated in the power centers of Southern California and tony New York suburbs. (A document provided by G.Wagen USA lists Pl1/3cido Domingo, Carroll O’Connor, Seal and Arnold Schwarzenegger, himself a Teutonic vehicle of death, as G-Wagen owners.)
But I wanted to see if the G-Wagen could sell in Washington, where power is best exercised with quiet discretion, which is to say, not from the front seat of a $135,000 S.U.V. But I couldn’t find a single Washington power figure willing to participate in my experiment. Vernon Jordan wasn’t home when I tried to take him for a ride. For security reasons, I did not approach the White House, and Robert Strauss’s secretary said her boss knows nothing about cars, except that he has a driver who drives his. So I sought out Washington’s premier critic of the Washington power game and of ostentatious consumption in general.
“Get out of the way, cars!” Ralph Nader yells as I drive him in circles around Washington. My goal has changed: rather than get Vernon Jordan to assess the truck’s future among Washington power figures, I would now try to persuade Nader—Mr. Unsafe at Any Speed, Mr. Green Party, Mr. My Car Is a Subway Train—to say something nice about the G-Wagen.
“This shows the outermost limits of technological madness,” Nader tells me.
I step on the gas. “Feel that pickup,” I say.
“What is this thing called again?” he asks. The Galaendewagen, I say.
“It’s the Stupidwagen, if you ask me.”
“But check out the steering wheel, Ralph. Burled walnut.”
He ignores me, asking instead how many G-Wagens are sold each year. One hundred and fifty, I tell him.
“One hundred and fifty knuckleheads,” Nader says.
I tell him that Schwarzenegger owns two.
“One hundred and forty-nine knuckleheads,” he says.
“Is there anything good you could say about the G-Wagen?” I ask.
“What’s good about this is that it shows us in one compressed bundle of metal the shameful level of conspicuous consumption in this country,” he says.
“Did I tell you that the steering wheel is burled walnut?” I ask.
It’s not even my truck, and Nader is making me feel bad. He’s not exactly wrong, though, about the G-Wagen. It’s not shameful, but I realized later that there’s something ridiculous about the notion of a $135,000 S.U.V., because the quotidian things you will do with a $135,000 S.U.V. are the same quotidian things you will do with a $20,000 Camry.
I had this revelation when I was discussing with my wife where we should take the G-Wagen to dinner. We chose a drive-thru, of course, to best show off the G-Wagen. I splurged and bought my wife a Taco Bell Taco Supreme, the Gelaendewagen of Mexican fast food.
But a problem arose, one that would stop me from ever buying a G-Wagen, even if I wasn’t approximately $133,250 short of the purchase price at the moment: I couldn’t find a single place to put my Dr. Pepper.
My G-Wagen had no cup holders. Not one. For $135,000, you’d think they could have built in a cup holder. My Ford Explorer—my modest, workaday Ford Explorer—has four cup holders. Now that’s what I call an S.U.V.