If I had all the money, I don’t think I’d buy a new Mercedes-Benz G-Class.

It’s a fine car, of course, but I don’t have the gall to mis-space the letters of my gel numberplates, and big alloys and low-profile tyres on serious 4x4s just look wrong to me.

But hello, here comes the new ‘Stronger than the 1980s’ special edition G-Class, which comes in two choice period colours, receives orange indicator repeaters, wears a black grille and light surround and runs on trad-looking 18in five-spoke wheels wearing chunky 265/60 R18 tyres.

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What a difference some very small details can make. It has gone from a car that I’d dismiss very easily to one about which I think: ‘Don’t wrap it – I’ll drive it home.’

I’ve just been on the G-Class configurator (an activity plenty of people avoiding deadlines will be familiar with. There’s now a Morgan Supersport one, by the way), and it’s true that you can already spec classic-style ‘Manufaktur’ non-metallic colours – like sand, a dark green and two blues – on the G-Class.

You can colour the wheel arches and roof in black too. But still those options don’t quite transform the car like these limited-edition details do.

For one, I think the new paint colours are rather more ‘period’ (Mercedes even calls them ‘nostalgia colours’), but the rest is all about those three changes: repeaters, grille, wheels. Mostly the 18in wheels; the minimum standard wheel size on a new G-Class is otherwise 20in.

Is there another car to which three such small options could make such a grand difference?  I don’t think so. Retro design details on modern cars usually look like anomalies, but here, because the latest G-Class design is sufficiently close to the original anyway, it’s the other way around.

It’s a typically specified modern G-Class, in those satin greys that are so popular, and on the big 22in wheels that AMG models wear, that looks like a restomod – an elderly gentleman dressed in athleisure wear.