Makers of premium wagons have warmed over the years to the idea of a more rugged variation that sports all-wheel drive, a slightly raised ride height, and some protective cladding for that dubious sense of security. Cars like the Audi A6 Allroad, Volvo V90 Cross Country, and Mercedes-Benz E-Class All-Terrain are the result.
But, depending on which one you take out into the countryside, the time it will take for you to get stuck (i.e punished) for venturing too far afield will vary from short to slightly less brief. Not with this, however, which is the one-off creation of an intrepid engineer at Mercedes-Benz, Jürgen Eberle, that explores the extremes of the go-anywhere wagon concept.
Mercedes-Benz, and their wackier subsidiary Mercedes-AMG, have had a history (much of it confined to the past few years) of introducing limited run versions of their powerful off-roaders that pull off this specific High Street Mad Max look.
Think of the G500 4×4² and the G 63 6x6 which, like those, also employ a portal axle suspension, which in this case lifts the E-Class All-Terrain to a ground clearance of 400mm (it has 160mm as standard) but also widens the car’s track by 200mm. Should it want to keep pace with the proper off-roaders in the Benz stable, though, it will need to adopt the requisite low-range gearbox and locking differential.
In fact Eberle lifted the setup straight out of that aforementioned G500 4x4, thus the logically named E-Class All-Terrain 4x4² was born. It now wears 20-inch wheels and even more imposing tyres. Apart from these changes, there wasn’t much else that needed to be swapped out as the standard all-wheel drive system and 3.0-litre turbocharged V6 petrol engine were more than up to the task of negotiating the far more challenging terrain that the added verticality allowed it to tackle.
According to the impressions gleaned by Auto Express, their time with the E-Class 4x4² was one that was just as luxurious and refined as a standard All-Terrain. In fact, they say that some higher-ups at Mercedes-Benz were so impressed with the car that the automaker is actually open to producing a small number of these category-defying wagons for sale.
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