Here's Why I Bought the World's Most Expensive Barbie Jeep

this is a 1999 mercedes-benz g500 Cabriolet and like I mentioned yesterday on my main channel it's my G 500 Cabriolet my radically overpriced Barbie Jeep now a lot of you probably have some questions about this vehicle like what would possess someone seemingly in their right mind to buy one of these and today I'm going to try to answer them let's dive right in alright now the first question you probably want the answer to is why why would someone buy this weird-looking strange convertible Mercedes G wagon especially because if you're a regular viewer you probably know that I already have a ridiculously overpriced vehicle that serves this purpose I have an open Land Rover Defender which means I now have two convertible v8 two-door SUVs so what's the reason alright so why well like I just mentioned I have this Land Rover Defender and I absolutely love it it's a 1997 model I've had it for almost three years and I just adore it but it is not a very rational vehicle for one thing it has no real roof there's a canvas top that you can put on but takes a minute or two and it's just not a realistic situation now having no roof wouldn't be such a big deal except for the fact that it also has no climate control it has an air conditioning system that is the most pathetic air conditioning system I have ever felt you have to put your knee directly in front of the vent to feel anything it also has no heat it only has a heater for the windshield not for the cabin which is just incredible every car has Heat how does this thing not but it doesn't and the defenders problems go beyond that safety is also a real concern in that vehicle it feels like it's from a totally different era you have no anti-lock brakes you have no airbags but beyond that the construction is just ridiculous it feels like it's gonna fall apart at any second the door is weigh about as much as a lined note card you just feel absolutely knows safety in that thing at all and my wife and I we just got a puppy we're thinking about having kids and so riding around and that is not a realistic thing when you have an infant or a toddler if you want them to live then there's the problem with the defenders performance it just isn't fast now I don't need my convertible SUV to be a fast vehicle but the defender is just really really slow with only about a hundred and eighty horsepower it's big it's heavy zero to sixty is probably something like eleven or twelve seconds and I just find it to be ponderous and a little bit difficult to drive on the road especially on the highway and keep up with traffic it can cruise at 80 miles an hour but it's a labor to do it when I'm driving the defender I don't take phone calls I don't do anything but sit there look forward and drive because it's slow it's hard to pass people and the safety aspect is kind of a concern and as a result the defender has become a vehicle that I don't really take basically anywhere except in my local area within probably five or ten or maybe 15 minutes of my house but I love my defender and I love the whole convertible off-roader thing and I wanted some vehicle that refined and improved all those issues with the defender but kept kind of the same general character and idea enter the convertible g-wagen the defender has no roof the g-wagen has a power roof as I showed you yesterday the defender has no climate control with a climate control and this thing works beautifully the air-conditioning is unreal the heat is fantastic especially when coupled with the crazy heated seats so you can be hot cold whatever in this thing and of course if you're too cold even with the climate control on you can just put up the roof makes it way more usable next up the defender has no safety stuff well the g-wagen does we have airbags in this thing which is a vast improvement over the defender we have anti-lock brakes we have maybe some semblance of crumple zones since Mercedes refined and updated the g-wagen over the years a lot more thoroughly than Land Rover updated the defender and another complaint the defender too slow for modern roads with its 180 horsepower and it's 4-speed Auto well this thing has 300 horsepower and a 5-speed auto and it keeps up with traffic absolutely beautifully incredibly smooth to drive that mitigates another under complaint and the g500 Cabrio just has better features for one thing it has power windows you push a button and they go down it's like an epiphany compared to the defender with its sliding windows that you can never get fully open unless you completely remove the top half of the door the seats fold forward very easily to get in the back whereas in the past you had to climb over the fender in my defender in order to get into the rear seats which was not a realistic thing for older passengers to actually do and one other benefit of the GK Brio is it has cruise control so not only is it easier to keep up with traffic but once you're doing that it can just keep going and you don't have to constantly be monitoring the pedal everything is just improvement when I drove this vehicle I was astonished at all these luxuries I Drive a lot of nice cars but the idea of taking what the defender has with the open roof and adding all this nice stuff I was blown away now I know what you're thinking already yeah I get all that I get why you'd want to improve the defender but you could have just bought it Jeep and it has almost all of that stuff and I get that but here's the thing I like weird cars if you saw that earlier video on my more dug channel where I give you the garage tour I'm like geeking out over my Saab 9 7 X diecast model car I just love weird cars and as you know I've had some success here on YouTube in the last five or six years and when someone who's into weird cars gets some more money they don't go out and buy an Aventador or McLaren to show off instead they just buy more expensive weird cars and that's exactly what this is yeah I considered a Jeep but it's just not as special not as cool the Wrangler has become so popular this thing is just interesting more it fits with my mantra of let's do something strange now one item I do want to mention that maybe will be especially confusing I'm not actually getting rid of my Land Rover Defender every time it's gonna be in a video from now on people can say I thought you got rid of that but no I'm not I love my defender it was my wedding getaway car I took it to my honeymoon it's been like my best friend for the last three years I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with it yet since its kind of redundant but I do plan on keeping both this a the defender there's no point in selling an offender it just keeps going up in value it's still special I still love it and I just kind of need to find a purpose for it now if you've been paying attention you'll notice that I said this was a 1999 model but I also said the g-wagen Cabriolet was never originally sold in North America now if you know anything about USA import laws you know that you can't actually import a car until it's 25 years old so how am I here with this 20 year old vehicle well it's a great question and it's one that I've gotten a lot so I want to take the time to thoroughly explain it here there is an exception to the 25 year rule and it's if the car is imported and goes through a process called federalization in order to actually conform to USA standards at the time the vehicle was built now there is an amazing and incredibly entertaining story about imported G wagons coming to the United States and being federalized by a company called Europa throughout the 1980s 1990s and still today it's an amazing story and it's one that I'm not gonna tell here but maybe in a future video but the point is this G wagon was also brought to the United States and federalized not by Europa by a different company but still it happened so this G Wagon Cabriolet was brought here before it turned 25 years old and all of the stuff that needed to be converted to make it USA legal was converted and that way the car is basically what would have been a u.s. spec G Wagen convertible had they sold it here so the speedometer has changed out and put into miles the mirrors are changed out and it says objects and mirror are closer than they appear the headlights have to be changed the bumpers various different items have to be updated but once all that's done it's as if this thing was a US legal G wagon in the first place now it's worth noting that it is relatively easy to go through the federalization process with a G wagon because beginning in 2002 mercedes-benz did start selling the G 500 here in the United States and so you can pretty much order all those USA specific parts from a 2002 G Wagon stick them on this and then you have a federalized and fully legal earlier G wagon but one that isn't still 25 years old so it's pretty doable for g-wagen it's a lot harder for vehicles that were never sold in the United States because then there are no u.s. conforming parts and you have to fabricate that stuff but in this case the hard work was done the G wagons ability to conform to u.s. standards had already been taken care of so you don't have to go through that whole process which can cost deep into the million dollar range but the process is actually a little bit more difficult than that because I live in California and California has its own import process beyond what the federal government has so there are only three shops in the entire country that can federalize a vehicle that was not sold in the u.s. to us a standards there's a lot of regulations about it only three shops are able to do it only one of those shops is here in California and only they are licensed to California eyes a vehicle to get it to meet California standards now you don't have to do this you can just have one imported federalize it and drive around with Montana plates or register it with somebody in Arizona or Utah or whatever but that's not me I don't get into that stuff I don't like to dodge taxes I don't like to dodge regulations and requirements if I'm gonna drive this thing I wanted to have a California plate and I want it to be legal and then I never have to worry at cars and coffee I never have to worry when a cop pulls me over I don't have to think about any of that stuff so I wanted a g500 Cabriolet that not only had been federalized for the USA but also had been federalized for California now as you can imagine that made my search process tremendously more difficult federalizing a car into California is doable but it's a process it takes six to seven months it costs ten to fifteen thousand dollars and like I mentioned there's only one shop that can do it and so this truck went to that shop it got all the California emissions equipment passed California's tests and now it's California legal now it's worth noting I did not actually do this the dealership where I bought it from brought this car over almost a year ago federalized it did the California process and then they offered it for sale and then I bought it with all of the right California labels and decals and permissions in place for it to be registered here now as you can imagine the result of all this is that this truck is in credibly rare never sold here in North America and it's California legal so just how rare I don't know the exact numbers but I suspect there are maybe between 150 and 200 power top g-wagon cabriolets here in North America that have been imported and federalized as for California legal trucks I think that number is more like five to ten most people do not bother going through that extra process complication cost to get these things registered and legal in California and so it is immensely immensely rare in fact I was not actually looking to buy this truck when it came up for sale but I've been watching the g-wagen cabriolet market for a while and I've never seen another California legal one come up for sale my wife and I wanted to hold off for a few more years until we actually had kids and wanted the safer vehicle but it came up and I knew I wasn't gonna be able to find another one especially in silver which is the color I wanted and so that's why I jumped on it so that's the story incredibly rare US legal California legal and that takes care of the how so now on to the inevitable question everybody wants to know how much I don't love this question because to me I don't buy cars like most normal people I only really go after cars that aren't really going to lose value they're special they're rare and they're not really depreciating and so yes the cars I've bought are all costly but it's an asset that you can sell unlike a McLaren or an Aventador which drop and value like a stone and then you just lose a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars the moment you start putting some miles on it I cannot bring myself to buy cars in that manner and that's why I have up for GT which isn't going down in value and I have this and my defender very expensive cars but they're not depreciating I am terrified to do it any other way and so that's why I have a couple of fun special cars that are pretty expensive but it's why my daily driver car is a seven-year-old station wagon with 85,000 miles that's worth like $33,000 because I just can't put a lot of money into a car I'm gonna drive a lot and then lose value in it it's just mentally I no matter how much you have I just mentally I can't do that and so a lot of these youtubers go off and buy McLaren or Aventador and it's just its success to me I can't I cannot lose that kind of value in a car and I always find it funny how people who dump money into car lease payments think that buying a car like this is spending a ton I've had people who have brand-new BMW for Surrey so you spent $65,000 on your defender that's crazy you like wasted your money meanwhile the defenders gone up 15 grand and value since I bought it and those people are out $20,000 in lease payments over three years now obviously if this goes up in value it will not go up anywhere near like the stock market especially when you factor in insurance and maintenance and repairs but you can't drive the stock market you only live once oh if you're gonna park your money somewhere it makes some sense to do it in a car at least that's not getting killed in value but anyway that's my financial lecture for the day all to say I can't justify buying these cars if I really think it's spending money and losing value so what does this thing cost the answer is a lot I'm not gonna sugarcoat it these are over a hundred thousand dollars which is crazy what do you think about what it is a nickolas 20 year old ugly mercedes-benz SUV but that is the going rate on the last public us sale of one of these was on bring a trailer a 2002 model sold to Michael Strahan actually the like football player turned talk-show host he spent one hundred forty five thousand dollars plus to bring a trailer Commission so a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a slightly newer version of mine with much better miles I didn't spend anywhere near that on mine but it was in that ballpark one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars you know if you're thinking that these things are only expensive because they were never sold in the USA and that once they become twenty five years old they're gonna go down in value it's worth noting you go on mobile dot de which is sort of the auto trader of Germany and of Europe and this is what they're selling for in Europe to the bulk of g-wagon cabriolets in my body style range are going between ninety and a hundred thousand euros which is like a hundred to one hundred and ten thousand dollars and of course then you have to factor in the import process the conversion to California legal now a lot of people will think this is an insane amount of money to spend for this thing and I kind of agree especially because a Ford or 99 g wagon is like a twenty-five thousand dollar vehicle but just like anything rarity and scarcity drives value people say to me all I could have had for $125,000 a new g63 or a two-year-old g63 and it's like yeah well for a million dollars you could have seven new Mercedes SLS or you could have a 300 SL going but special rarer older cars that were made in really small numbers they tend to be more valuable just like watches jewelry boats planes it doesn't matter now of course the G Wagen Cabrio is no Mercedes gullwing but the idea is the same and you may not really get it you know why would someone spend that that's absurd even though you know it's rare and unusual that's crazy money and I get it too I mean I I don't understand people are spending eighty thousand dollars on nice integra type-r it's crazy think they're spending $120,000 on supras I find that to be absurd I don't get that but that's where the market is because they're scarce they're special they're rare and the same thing applies to this just instead of a mark for super or replace it with a ugly 20 year old convertible truck but anyway that's the story of the G 500 Cabriolet now because I am keeping my defender I now have two convertible SUVs I am now the king of convertible SUVs and I only now need a Murano cross Cabriolet no just kidding imagine you

Channel: More Doug DeMuro

Views: 870,876

Rating: 4.8771043 out of 5

Keywords: doug demuro, doug demuro g500, doug demuro g500 cabriolet, demuro, doug demuro mercedes g-wagen

Id: iaL6_LO3LJM

Length: 17min 16sec (1036 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Michelanvalo]

Doug's been hammering the "Don't buy a car that depreciates" thing for years. And I think that's good advice on average. Whether your buying a $150k G500 convertible or a $5000 Civic, the cars that depreciate less or not at all is more to get your value out of it when you want to sell it.

This strategy does require waiting on the used market to see what a car's long term value is and most people I think just want the latest and greatest newest thing. Especially people in the 100k+ territory.

[u/LettuceC]

I like to make fun of Doug, but props to him for following the rules on getting the car approved for use in the US and California.

Nothing irks me more than some guy in a Ferrari with Montana plates to save some money on taxes.

[u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth]

One thing people don't mention that often is that YouTubers like this can buy these cars and write them off their income taxes as a business expense. So not only does the car not depreciate much at all it also lets Doug have a new toy and lower his tax liability at the end of the year because he's using the car for content for his job. Or at least I assume this is the case.

[u/DracoDragonite]

I wonder if Doug is planning on putting on the newer style G-class headlights (HID projectors) to match the newer style grille, instead of the candle lamp halogens

[u/takesjuantogrowone]

He needs to put googly-eyes on that chisel!

https://imgur.com/M59coPk

[u/t-poke]

/u/Doug-DeMuro - Forget the cars, when are we going to get a video on your puppy's quirks and features?

[u/LettuceC]

Thanks to Doug, YouTube now thinks I'm some sort of Barbie fan weirdo.

https://imgur.com/a/CeO3qPg

[u/HOOK-3M]

Mr. Doug, I like both the Defender and The Barbie Mobile, but it sounds like most of your issues with the Defender could have easily been solved with an ICON Defender.

[u/Wizard_of_Ohmz]

You could've bought an Izuzu Samurai and saved your pennies lol