Latvian carmaker Dartz Motorz isn’t a brand you’d call understated.
Led by eccentric boss Leonard Yankelovich since 1988, the company has become renowned in the automotive sector for making some of the world’s most bonkers vehicles.
Operating out of a factory in the nation’s capital, Riga, it exclusively produces ultra-luxurious and heavily armoured super-SUVs, like its gold-plated Prombron Aladeen Edition MMXXII.
Need a measure of just how crazy it is? Kanye West bought two of its Iron Diamond trucks – which ‘prevent kidnapping, hijacking and other problems which can meet a rich and lonely lady on the street’ – for $2.4million in 2013, the year he and Kim Kardashian had the first of their four children, North West, and he demanded the ultimate vehicle to keep his family safe.
For 2026, Dartz is adding a new model to its ranks.
It has unveiled its first people carrier called the ‘Pullman Shere Khan’. Pullman is a nod to the luxury railway carriages of the 1800s, while Shere Khan references the fictional Bengal tiger featured in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. Why have the two been combined? We’re not sure.
What we do know is that the MPV is based on a Mercedes-Benz V-Class, can withstand a grenade blast and drone attack, and costs an eye-watering £300,000.
And while Jaguar might have ditched its big-cat logos as part of its controversial electric rebrand, Dartz has gone with an enormous roaring lion mould that sticks out from the front of the van’s massive grille. Modest, it is not.
Maddest MPV ever: Dartz Motorz has just unveiled its new £300,000 armoured Pullman Shere Khan limo with a massive lion face in its grille – and that’s not its most bonkers feature
The MPV is based on a Mercedes-Benz V-Class and uses the German brand’s thunderous 4.0-litre twin turbo V8. Its armoured shell means it withstand a grenade blast and drone attack
Dartz describes the vehicle as filling a void in the market that sits above ‘ÜberLuxury V.V.I.P. Vans’ and ‘Gigaluxury Vans’.
But it concedes that it had no intention of making a bulletproof people carrier.
Why did it change its mind? ‘Some stubborn clients still love to be delivered to a meeting place as fresh, but tired, vegetables,’ it told This is Money.
‘As bespoke people, Dartz can’t refuse.
‘Yes, some Big Fish love to be delivered like frozen fish or vegetables.’
Taking a jab at other carmakers, it says the Pullman Shere Khan ‘looks different to all the other I-wanna-be-Maybach vans’. And it’s certainly right about that.
On the outside, the split paintwork sees metallic gold at the top blend into a black lower section.
The paint covers a completely armoured shell with heavy-duty bolt-on castings around the front doors and over the windscreen for additional protection.
Its non-metallic composite armour system – called ‘GBOL’ and developed by its tank subsidiary operation – provides ballistic protection up to military-grade STANAG 2 and civilian protection levels of BR10+.
This means the bodywork can withstand 39mm armour-piercing rounds from 30 metres, as well as blasts from 6kg anti-tank mines. Even the glass is protected against shots fired from high-powered sniper rifles like a Dragunov.
The bonnet too is fully armoured and has been created specifically for this project to ensure there’s ample ventilation to the massive engine under the hood.
Yankelovich, to this day, refuses to reveal what GBOL stands for.
The opulent people carrier also comes with Dartz’s in-house-developed ‘Drone Protection Standard’, which it calls a ‘new benchmark for security’.
This has been created to tackle the ‘increasingly sophisticated and widely used’ threat of drone attacks, which has ‘grown exponentially’ in recent years.
‘From carrying weapons and surveillance equipment to even delivering explosives, drones have emerged as one of the most dangerous threats in both civilian and military contexts,’ the carmaker says.
Hardware on the MPV’s roof can jam the signal of an attacking drone to ‘disrupt communication and neutralise their capabilities’ before taking it out entirely. It calls this Jamming and Annihilating Drone (JAD) technology.
And the Pullman Shere Khan can turn the tables too; it has its own ‘Scout Drones’ that can be deployed for ‘real-time aerial reconnaissance, giving Dartz vehicles an advanced layer of awareness’.
Its armour provides ballistic protection up to military-grade STANAG 2 and civilian protection levels of BR10+. It can block armour-piercing rounds from 30 metres and 6kg anti-tank mines
Read More
Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Grenadier in race to replace Army’s Land Rover Defenders
At the front of the vehicle, the brand’s signature headlight cluster flanks what it calls a ‘Picassian Sliced Art Deco Grille’ with a cast lion head leaping out of it.
But the manufacturer says its ‘billionaire customers’ can pick any 3D sculpture of their preference to adorn the front of their MPV – and Dartz will make it and slam it onto the face of the vehicle.
‘We tried to make the van look as Dartz as possible, [while] keeping a delivery van form,’ it says.
On the inside, the people carrier’s cabin is likened to an ‘Ali Baba cave’.
It is equipped with bright orange seats upholstered in eco-leather. Dartz says the word ‘eco’ has now replaced the former non-leather material name it was marketing: ‘F***ing not leather’.
The company told us the cabin will be kept ‘as old-school as possible’ to suit a clientele that comes from ‘real old money’ and wants a luxury motor with ‘real Maybach seats, a TV in a wooden box, real wood, and even a real – but upgraded – old-school cellphone’.
Pullman is a nod to the luxury railway carriages of the 1800s, while Shere Khan references the fictional Bengal tiger featured in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, the brand tells us
Under the bonnet is not the typical powerplant you’d find in a V-Class MPV. But it is a Mercedes engine.
It uses the 4.0-litre, twin-turbo AMG V8 lifted from the AMG GT sports car and the G63 G-Wagon. This produces 639hp and 900Nm of torque, with a redline at 7,200rpm.
Given the additional weight of the armoured body, no 0-to-62mph acceleration time or top speed has been revealed, yet.
Production, we imagine, will be extremely limited and demand driven. Kanye’s probably on the blower to Latvia as we speak…
