MERCEDES G WAGON WEARS VERDY'S VISTY CAMOUFLAGE

Visty Takes The G Wagon, Vick Already Has The CLA

The capsule opens September 12 at Mercedes Benz STUDIO TOKYO in Omotesando and runs through September 27. Two t shirt designs and one keyring make up the merchandise, small by design against the scale of the two art cars parked inside the space. Both vehicles carry camouflage patterns Verdy drew by hand rather than a licensed graphic dropped onto stock paint. Vick, his panda rabbit hybrid, wraps the next generation CLA. Visty, the fluffier of the two characters, covers the G Wagon in sage green fur toned camouflage broken up with pastel pink, yellow and blue. That is more than a graphic artist parking a G Wagon in a showroom. The G Wagon's silhouette has barely changed since the 1970s, a boxy shape Mercedes keeps almost as a mascot of its own. Visty started as a plush toy, and the G Wagon is the body style built to look soft on the outside and armored underneath, which sits closer to Visty's own design brief than any car livery usually gets. Mercedes builds the G Wagon on a ladder frame borrowed from military trucks, then sells it to buyers who will never take it off a paved road, a contradiction Verdy's camouflage leans into instead of hiding.

A Sage Green Monster First Lived As A Plush Toy

Visty debuted as a plush toy at Verdy's RISE ABOVE solo exhibition in Tokyo, sage green fur wrapped around a body Verdy calls cute and monstrous at once, with pastel pink, yellow and blue breaking up the fur in patches. Its companion character Vick, a hybrid of a rabbit and a panda, is the one riding on the CLA. Nike SB translated Visty's plush texture into a Dunk Low in 2024, Verdy's third collaboration with the Nike Skateboarding team, using corduroy overlays and a fur underlay to copy the toy itself instead of just its color story. The Mercedes camouflage is Visty's first full sized surface, four doors and a spare tire cover standing in for a shoe's toe box and heel. Verdy built both characters years after leaving Osaka, where he was born in 1987, for Tokyo in 2012 to join the design collective VK Design Works before either creature had a name. McDonalds, Levis and Instagram have all put his work on a wall or a package since, but none of them handed him a full vehicle to paint until Mercedes did.

The G Wagon Follows A CLA By Five Days

Vick's CLA opened the same Tokyo capsule on September 7, wrapped in the panda rabbit character's own black and white camouflage before Visty's G Wagon joined it five days later. That CLA piece arrived a little over two years after Human Made named Verdy its creative partner in August 2024, a role that put his characters on a streetwear label before Mercedes ever asked for a car. Verdy has moved through Nike, Kenzo, Beats By Dre and Dover Street Market without settling on one lane, and a two car Tokyo pop up is that pattern built at full scale, not a one time favor for a car company. Poggy's custom Porsche 911 ran a version of that play in January, another Tokyo tastemaker treating a German automaker's showroom like a gallery instead of a dealership. Both designers picked the brand's showroom over their own retail space on purpose, betting the car sells the character faster than a hangtag ever could.

Two T Shirts And A Keyring Is The Whole Retail Play

The merchandise stays deliberately small, two t shirt designs and one keyring, so the capsule reads like an exhibition with a gift shop attached, not a size run competing with Verdy's own labels. Nobody has listed a price for either shirt, and the G Wagon and CLA themselves are not for sale at any figure. The exhibition runs through September 27 at Mercedes Benz STUDIO TOKYO, and after that both cars go back to being paint samples in a design archive. Visty's G Wagon is the stronger half of this pairing. A rabbit panda hybrid on a sedan reads like brand extension. A plush toy's own fur pattern on the one Mercedes body built for armor instead of speed reads like Verdy chose the chassis on purpose. The exhibition closes September 27, and whichever character Verdy turns into a plush toy next decides which car gets painted after this one.