The Mercedes G-Wagon, the Geländewagen, is a beautiful word on the tongue, even if it means ‘off-road vehicle’. But Mercedes, which sounds like a long and expensive hiss, is good at noise. There is no better door slam than the G-Wagon’s and no more pleasing sound to a door handle pushed inwards with the ball of the thumb. The G-Wagon was designed at the suggestion of the last Shah of Iran and that’s a good reasons to love it. I sometimes attend rallies that are pro-Iran (and anti-Islamic Republic of Iran) because I love the cause, and the campness of the iconography: the Lion of Iran hugging the Lion of Israel. Now we have an inspirational car too, and it works thematically, being likewise camp and savage. I don’t know what the Islamic Republic of Iran’s themed car should be – spiritually it needs a pick-up truck, we saw the videos – but it prefers something called IKCO Samand, which Car Magazine, in 2018, gave two (out of five) stars for performance, and three (out of five) stars for feelgood factor, which made me laugh, because I didn’t know the feelgood factor applies to Iran. It’s a saloon for state-sponsored........

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