Our modern-day 200 series 2016 Land Cruiser would be hardly recognizable to its creators. It's got a refrigerator and room for eight鈥攖he original didn't even have a roof or doors. The Land Cruiser is powered by a 5.7-liter V-8 making 381 hp and 401 lb-ft of torque mated to a new-for-2016 eight-speed automatic. The Toyota sports a full-time four-wheel-drive system with a default 40/60 front/rear split and a Torsen limited-slip locking center differential sending torque to the axle with more grip. Although the basic Gel ndewagen (German for "cross-country vehicle") formula hasn't changed in 37 years, it has advanced with the times. The anemic four- and five-cylinder diesel engines the G launched with have long since disappeared. In their place in the U.S. V-8s and a V-12. As tempted as we were to bring a 621-hp V-12 Mercedes-AMG G65 along for the end of the world, the updated 2016 Mercedes-Benz G550 is a more sensible choice. Under its hood is a new 4.0-liter, twin-turbo V-8 making a healthy 416 hp and 450 lb-ft of torque paired with a seven-speed automatic and a full-time four-wheel-drive system.

Our modern-day 200 series 2016 Land Cruiser would be hardly recognizable to its creators. It's got a refrigerator and room for eight鈥攖he original didn't even have a roof or doors. The Land Cruiser is powered by a 5.7-liter V-8 making 381 hp and 401 lb-ft of torque mated to a new-for-2016 eight-speed automatic. The Toyota sports a full-time four-wheel-drive system with a default 40/60 front/rear split and a Torsen limited-slip locking center differential sending torque to the axle with more grip. Although the basic Gel ndewagen (German for "cross-country vehicle") formula hasn't changed in 37 years, it has advanced with the times. The anemic four- and five-cylinder diesel engines the G launched with have long since disappeared. In their place in the U.S. V-8s and a V-12. As tempted as we were to bring a 621-hp V-12 Mercedes-AMG G65 along for the end of the world, the updated 2016 Mercedes-Benz G550 is a more sensible choice. Under its hood is a new 4.0-liter, twin-turbo V-8 making a healthy 416 hp and 450 lb-ft of torque paired with a seven-speed automatic and a full-time four-wheel-drive system.

Like the Jeep, the G550's off-road hardware is pretty simple: an electronically switchable low range and locking center, front, and rear differentials. The G-wagen gets bonus cool points for current military duty, serving the U.S. Marine Corps as the Interim Fast Attack Vehicle. Read about the G65 right here: 1973 Icon FJ44 vs. More than half of Americans live on the earthquake- and tsunami-prone West and hurricane-prone East Coasts. It isn't too hard to imagine a scenario where coastal Americans would have to escape some sort of water disaster to higher ground. And those major population centers? Obvious targets for evildoers or breeding grounds for a plague. Odds are if you're one of those 159.5 million, you're going to spend a bit of time on the interstate escaping inland. To simulate such a situation, Scott Evans, Jonny Lieberman, and I packed up the Jeep, Toyota, and Mercedes-Benz and pointed our rigs northeast toward northwestern Colorado鈥?,000 feet has got to be high enough to escape a big wave, right?

The miles to the mountains would allow us to determine which vehicle would best bug out while balancing performance, fuel economy, and comfort on the open road. For escaping in a hurry, it's tough to beat the G550. The flying brick will do 0-60 in 5.9 seconds and complete the quarter mile in 14.4 seconds at 95.7 mph. Flat-footing the throttle at highway speeds spurs on quick downshifts, the twin-turbos ensuring an absolute wall of torque that'll help the G out-accelerate almost anything on its tail, even at altitude. You pay for that performance, though; the G550 nets a Real MPG score of 17.0/15.3/16.2 mpg city/highway/combined. Down two turbos, two cylinders, and two cogs to the Benz, the Rubicon accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in 8.2 seconds and needs 16.3 seconds to finish the quarter mile at 82.5 mph. The V-6 and five-speed automatic combo are fine in L.A.

Jeep's torquier rivals, especially at high elevations. Passing becomes an exercise in planning ahead and patience鈥攏ot ideal if you're making a break for it. The Jeep's 14.4/17.1/15.5 Real MPG isn't the stuff of long-term survival, either, so plan on scavenging a jerrycan or two. The Land Cruiser nicely splits the difference. The Toyota takes 6.8 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 60 and 15.2 seconds to complete the quarter mile at 91.2 mph. The Land Cruiser's ride is soft, and the cabin is quiet. There is room for improvement, though; the brakes are too touchy, and in the default drive mode, the transmission is annoyingly eager to upshift in an effort to save fuel. That could be for the best, though. Thanks to the Land Cruiser's 12.3/19.2/14.7 Real MPG rating and relatively small 24.6-gallon fuel tank, we found it difficult to get much farther than 300 miles between fill-ups on our highway drive to Colorado.

It's worth mentioning that Australian-spec Land Cruisers come standard with an 11.9-gallon auxiliary tank鈥攖hat's definitely something worth looking into before the end. We needed to find some powder. That turned out to be as simple as calling the Bridgestone Winter Driving School in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The Bridgestone school is where pro rally driver Tanner Foust honed his chops and where we spent a day honing ours before letting the Land Cruiser, Wrangler, and G550 loose in the snow. The Bridgestone School supplied a set of Blizzak winter tires for both the Jeep and Toyota. Mercedes recently upped the wheel size for the G550, and there are currently no winter tires that fit it. The best way to figure out which vehicle ruled in the snow would be back-to-back-to-back hot laps to simulate an escape with our lives and our gear, imaginary War Boys in pursuit. We agreed that the vehicle that gripped the best, got stuck the least, and felt the most sure-footed deserved the King in the North crown.