STUTTGART: Mercedes-Benz is smoothing the lines of its boxy G-Class off-roader with a restyled replacement offering the first electric option in four decades of exhaust-belching mud plugging.

The current G-Class, dubbed the G-Wagen in English-speaking countries, has been in continuous production for 44 years but model chief Emmerich Schiller says the maker had no plans to retire it.

"The G-Class is one of our longest-running and most popular vehicles," Schiller said in an interview with the German trade website Autohaus.de. "The car is perhaps a little anachronistic, but perhaps that is also why it is successful."

Despite regular revamps, the storied G-Class looks distinctly old-fashioned next to the off-road competition.

Speaking at the September IAA mobility show in Munich, Schiller said the new G-Wagen will take cues from its forthcoming electric EQG sibling and offer significant improvements in fuel economy. The revamp will also be available with diesel and petrol engines.

The nose section of the new G-Class has been rounded off to become more aerodynamic and a range of bodywork revisions are designed to make the off-roader as fuel-efficient as possible.

"It will be almost the same car. It comes with our philosophy: It's not an electric car, it’s a G-Class and you can have it with a petrol engine, a diesel engine or with electric power," Schiller told the British motoring mag Autocar.

The new EQG is set to arrive in 2024 and is conceived as a zero-emission equivalent of the ultra-rugged machine.

Emmerich said Stuttgart was being deliberately tight-lipped about details of a new smaller G-Class, also announced in Munich, as it was still under development.

The G-Class was originally developed as a military vehicle from a suggestion by the King of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah, a significant Mercedes shareholder at the time. It was offered as a civilian vehicle in 1979, the same year the Shah fled his country during the Iranian Revolution.

Both the G-Wagen's exterior and interior were revised in 2000 and its distinctive styling has only been tweaked in minor ways since. In April Mercedes said it produced its 500,000th G-Class model.

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