Let me give you an example.
A Land Rover Defender can wade through half a metre of water
and that's very good.
This can wade through twice that.
However, this being the desert, water is quite hard to find.
So, if you want to test it, you do have to improvise.
Morning, sorry.
Sorry.
This is, unless I'm very much mistaken, a metre of water.
And the six-by-six is... wading through it.
Even dealing with the rubber rings.
Yeah, not having any difficulties with this at all.
But how does it cope with sand?
Well, the good news is, sand is one thing we're really not short of.
Welcome to the Empty Quarter...
the largest sand desert in the world...
covering some 250,000 square miles.
Out here, temperatures hit 50 degrees centigrade.
And there are dunes more than 800 feet high.
Okay, we have six-wheel drive
with the power split 30-40-30 across the axles... check.
Stronger front springs from the armoured version of the G-Class... check.
Locking diffs... oh, we've got those.
The most you'd expect normally would be three. On here, five!
And you lock them using these buttons in different ways.
Right, let's go.
These are big, big dunes. This is more of a sand mountain I'm on right now.
Three-and-three-quarter tons of Mercedes is doing this!
It just doesn't feel right!
This extra axle and these two extra wheels,
it changes the way the six-by-six travels over the ground.
It undulates. It feels supple.
It's like blasting through the desert dunes...
riding a sinew.
Come on!
No!
I got some air. Sorry, everybody.
Intoxicated by what the Merc could do,
I drove deeper and deeper into the Empty Quarter.
Right, where's it go now?
'Cause... Oh, my God! Oh!
Oh, for crying out loud!
I wouldn't ski down that!
Okay.
Over the top, over the top...
All very unpleasant! Not nice!
It's vertical!
I'm in a car, I'm having a plane crash!
I'm still going down!
Oh, what a stupid place! I hate it!
Ahead, I saw a nice, flat desert floor and decided
that was a much safer place to be.
It's drifting!
Now it's a rally car, a gigantic rally car.
And let's not forget, I'm not having to shout over this.
It's not rah in here.
I'm still cocooned in luxury.
It's an amazing device.
Now, when you take an off-roader across sand,
the standard practice, as I've done,
is to let some air out of the tyres to give them a bigger footprint.
Now I'm going back on tarmac, so, I need to re-inflate them.
All I've got to do is operate these overhead switches.
I feel like a jet pilot.
Compressor on.
Going up.
And they can re-inflate all of these tyres in under a minute.
Oh, I love this.
If I did this in Ledbury, I'd be mobbed by now.
Leaving the Empty Quarter behind, I headed back towards civilisation.
I'm not going to pretend this is anything less than a preposterous machine.
It's a six-metre, three-and-three-quarter ton,
£370,000, six-wheeled dinosaur...
but as dinosaurs go, it is a magnificent one.
Magnificent to behold, magnificently made, it's one of the car world's mad moments,
a day off from Priuses and Leafs.
Even in a country as chock-full of showy-offy cars as this one...
it's still really rather special.
You can forget your chrome wraps and whatever.
I don't think you can beat just having more wheels than anything else.
And I can say with absolute confidence
that I have more wheels than any other... Oh.
No matter. One thing I can say for sure is that this is
the most extreme Mercedes out here.
I doubt there's anything with a Mercedes badge in these parts
that can draw as much attention... as that.
All right, so I don't have the most wheels.
It's not the most extreme Mercedes out here,
but the six-by-six does have size on its side.
Bigger than any Range Rover, bigger than any Land Cruiser,
bigger than that old Jeep up there and that's the thing.
A car can be beautiful, but when it's big, it's got presence
and they don't come much bigger than...
Oh... my... God.
I want this one.