There was no 1987 Mercedes-Benz GRA 500. No concept car, no prototype, no one-off. On October 2, the X account Quirky Rides posted two pictures labeled “Mercedes Benz GRA 500 (1987)”: a boxy white, black and red off-roader with a three-pointed star on the grille, a model in shorts leaning on the fender, and a neat little spec box in the corner. It got shared all over the place. It is an AI image, and X readers have already pinned a community note under it.
What the record shows
The community note on the post says it plainly: “The post depicts a non-existent Mercedes-Benz GRA 500 from 1987. No such model or concept appears in official Mercedes-Benz production records or lists of historical concept vehicles.” It points to MercedesBlog’s concept-car overview and to German Wikipedia’s list of Mercedes-Benz concept vehicles. That list goes from the 1981 Auto 2000 and the 1982 NAFA straight to the 1991 C 112 and F 100. Nothing in 1987, and nothing called GRA. English Wikipedia’s list of Mercedes-Benz vehicles shows the same gap. Real Mercedes concepts show up with a press kit and a photo shoot, the way the AMG PureSpeed did. This one showed up on social media 39 years after the date on it.
The same car also turned up on DeviantArt the next day as “Mercedes Benz GRA 500 87,” posted by the user Gasa979. DeviantArt tags that upload “Created using AI tools.”
So where does “GRA” come from?
Mercedes never used GRA as a model name. In German, though, GRA is the standard abbreviation for Geschwindigkeitsregelanlage, which means cruise control. It is all over German used-car ads, where you’ll see a listing like “500 SEC … Leder … Klima … GRA.” Our best guess is that someone, or some image generator, mashed an equipment code from an old Benz ad into a model name. Nobody can prove that, but it fits a lot better than a secret program that never left a single press photo behind.
The spec box is a parts-bin job
The fake’s spec box claims a 5.0-liter naturally aspirated V8, 4,973 cc, 272 hp at 5,200 rpm and 400 Nm at 3,500 rpm. The displacement is real. It is the M 117 V8 from the 500 SEC, and Mercedes’ own archive data sheet for the 1985–1991 500 SEC lists exactly 4,973 cc. The rest doesn’t match. Mercedes rates that car at 245 hp at 4,750 rpm and 400 Nm at 3,750 rpm. From September 1987 it got 265 hp at 5,200 rpm (252 hp with a catalytic converter) and 405 Nm, or 390 Nm with the cat. No 5.0-liter Mercedes was ever rated at 272 hp. That number belongs to the bigger 5,547 cc engine in the 560 SEC, which Mercedes rates at 272 hp at 5,000 rpm. So the box is made of real numbers taken from different cars and different years, which is how this kind of fake usually looks convincing.
The real V8 off-roader came in 1993
If the GRA 500 reminds you of a G-wagen with a V8, that makes sense, but the real one showed up six years after the fake’s date. Mercedes introduced the 500 GE V8 (W 463) at the Geneva show in March 1993. It was the first G with eight cylinders, and it used the same 4,973 cc M 117. Mercedes’ archive lists 177 kW, or 241 hp, at 5,000 rpm and 375 Nm at 3,500 rpm, with permanent four-wheel drive. It came only as a long-wheelbase station wagon and cost DM 178,250. Mercedes built 446 of them. The Mercedes-Benz Classic press release (German) for its 30th anniversary says AMG in Affalterbach built the first test vehicles. It also says production stayed small because the M 117 was running out and the newer four-valve M 119 wouldn’t fit in the G’s engine bay. One more detail from that release: cruise control was standard. The real 500 had GRA. The fake GRA 500 never had anything.
The clutch was the biggest fake
The spec box lists a “5-speed manual / 4-speed automatic.” We couldn’t find a single source for the manual. Mercedes’ archive lists one transmission for the 500 SEC: a four-speed automatic with a hydraulic torque converter. It lists the same for the 500 GE V8: a four-speed automatic, as standard. Neither car has a stick option on its data sheet. No Mercedes ever put a clutch pedal behind that 4,973 cc V8. The made-up car had a manual. The real ones didn’t.
The bottom line
The GRA 500 is an AI picture with a borrowed spec box and a name that probably came from a cruise-control code. If you want a real boxy Benz with a 5.0-liter V8 and a star on the grille, find one of the 446 500 GE V8s and live with the automatic. If you want the modern, more extreme version of the same idea, there’s BRABUS’s 700-hp G 63.
Sources: Quirky Rides post and X community note; DeviantArt upload labeled “Created using AI tools”; Wikipedia list of Mercedes-Benz concept vehicles; MercedesBlog concept overview; Mercedes-Benz Classic archive data sheets for the 500 SEC, 560 SEC and 500 GE V8; Mercedes-Benz press release on the 500 GE V8.
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