R 350 4MATIC

STORY

The R-Class was Mercedes-Benz's ambitious 'Grand Sports Tourer,' launched for 2006 as an attempt to fuse the space of a minivan, the ride height of a wagon and the luxury of an S-Class into a single six-seat package. Built at Mercedes' Tuscaloosa, Alabama plant on the same W164 platform that underpinned the M-Class and GL-Class, it offered standard 4MATIC all-wheel drive and a range topped by the extraordinarily 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) adopted 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, continuing production for China until roughly 2017. Today the R-Class is remembered as a commercially unsuccessful but forward-looking experiment, with the R 63 AMG a genuine cult collectible among AMG enthusiasts.