Have you ever felt guilty about ignoring your car’s owner’s manual? Well, here’s some comforting news. If you drive a Mercedes-Benz G-Class, reading that thing cover to cover would take you longer than watching all of “The Lord of the Rings” films back-to-back.

That’s not an exaggeration.

An analysis of more than 120 popular car manuals found that the G-Class tops them all, with a whopping 185,783 words

That’s enough to keep you busy for 13 hours and 1 minute if you read at the average adult pace. Which is more time than most of us spend on a flight from New York to Tokyo. All three LOTR films, by the way, take viewers more than 11 hours to watch.

The research, published this month by the junk car price comparison site Wheelsaway, measured the sheer size of these manuals and how long they’d take to read in full.

The findings suggest that modern cars have become so complex that even learning how they work is now a time commitment on par with reading a novel

On average, manuals across all 120 cars clocked in at 100,997 words, which translates to roughly seven hours of reading.

It’s no wonder so many people simply skip them

Wheelsaway’s survey found that 56% of drivers have never read the manual for any vehicle they’ve owned. About 13% admitted they don’t even know where theirs is.

And yet those same book-length documents explain everything from decoding dashboard warnings to how lane-keeping systems behave in the rain.

Some manuals are far more demanding than others

The Mercedes G-Class sits firmly at the top, with its 13-hour read time putting it on par with Tolkien.

It even outpaces Michelle Obama’s “Becoming,” which would take just under 12 hours to read. 

The Ram Pickup 3500 comes next, with an 11-hour, 14-minute manual, followed closely by the Kia EV3, Ford Super Duty, and Jeep Grand Cherokee. All of which require more than 10 hours of attention.

Even the Ford F-150 and its electric sibling, the Lightning, make the list, each taking close to 10 hours to read.

In fact, the top seven manuals in the study all exceed the length of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” and Albert Einstein’s “Relativity: The Special and General Theory”…combined

That means understanding your G-Class, truck, or Jeep might actually take more effort than understanding…the universe?!

It’s clear why many drivers don’t have the patience. More than 40% now turn to Google or YouTube for answers instead. And increasingly, they’re enlisting artificial intelligence as a sort of personal mechanic.

Experts say “I’ll Just Ask AI” works best when you upload the actual manual and instruct the AI to base answers only on that document, rejecting guesses or speculation

AI isn’t a replacement for the manual itself, they caution, but it can make the thing usable. 

Especially if the alternative is reading it over an entire weekend.

The takeaway here isn’t that you should read every page. Wheelsaway’s spokesperson noted that few people will ever carve out 13 hours just to study their SUV, and that’s fine.

The point is to know the essentials before you drive

How to operate safety systems, what warning lights mean, and how to handle basic maintenance. A full read-through might be excessive, but a targeted skim could keep you safer and save you money.

Cars are now among the most complex machines most people will ever own

And judging by the size of their manuals, learning to operate one isn’t all that different from reading a classic work of literature.

The Mercedes G-Class just happens to be the automotive equivalent of Tolkien: epic, beloved, and maybe a little longer than you bargained for.