R 280

STORY

The R-Class was the ambitious 'Grand Sports Tourer' from Mercedes-Benz, launched for 2006. It tried to combine the space of a minivan, the ride height of a wagon and the luxury of an S-Class in one six-seat car. It was built at the Mercedes plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on the same W164 platform as the M-Class and GL-Class. 4MATIC all-wheel drive was standard, and the range was topped by the very rare R 63 AMG, whose hand-built 6.2-litre M156 V8 made the two-tonne people-carrier one of the fastest of its kind. A 2010 facelift (W251.2) gave it a more SUV-like nose and dropped the AMG flagship, but the concept never found its audience: neither wagon nor SUV nor van, it sold poorly in the US and Europe. Mercedes withdrew it from Western markets by 2013 and kept building it for China until roughly 2017. Today the R-Class is remembered as a commercially unsuccessful but forward-looking experiment, and the R 63 AMG is a genuine cult collectible among AMG enthusiasts.