Cars are rated one (forget it) to four ('bout as good as it gets) James Deans

• Style: specialty vehicle
• Engine: 6.5-liter turbo diesel V8
• Transmission: four-speed automatic
• Drivetrain: four-wheel drive
• Horsepower: 195 hp @ 3,400 rpm
• Torque: 430 ft-lbs. @ 1,800 rpm
• EPA mileage: 13 city/17 highway
• Weight: 6,814 lb.
• Base price: $83,733
• Price as tested: $101,375

NOTE: Some comments from a review of a 1999 Hummer wagon are included in this review. All criticisms still apply.

17:23 EDT, TUESDAY: I had no idea. No idea I was getting a Hummer to test. I mean, a person needs to mentally prepare for something like this. Neighbors come out of their houses, kids bicycle down the block, insects flock to embrace the paint, an orbiting spy satellite takes multiple pictures and notifies the proper authorities. This is a BIG DEAL.

A person needs to prep for something like a Hummer.

Because ... there's nothing else like a Hummer.

Yet there it was. Too big to fit in the driveway. Parked curbside in the street. And the delivery driver, a former Big Rig truck driver, was excising himself from the driver's seat.

Small talk is overwhelmed by the presence of a Hummer. What can you say? "Not exactly a city car, is it?"

"Not exactly."

He wanted to talk about the car wash test vehicles always get before delivery. No commercial car wash would accept the Hummer. Too big. Too .. everything. No way. A hand wash would be $60, he was told. Ouch. No way. So he had washed it himself. And he was not a happy camper about that fact.

"The last tester ran it through a bunch of Georgia clay," he said, "and it was a mess."

Somehow, you expect a Hummer, the civilian version of the military's Humvee, to come with a camouflaged, Desert Storm paint scheme. It certainly stands out enough from other vehicles to not need an in-your-face body color. Yet, this monster by the curb was Urban Uproar Yellow!

It looked for all the world like a miniature school bus. Or the descendent of a German World War II truck now owned by the newest despotic dictator of some banana republic awash in civil strife.

The delivery driver handed me the paperwork. Usual stuff: Small print. Won't race it. Won't drive it to Canada or Mexico. Won't park in a New York City borough. Won't use it for hire. Won't let friends drive it. Will pay my parking fines.

Then he handed me the sticker.

There on the last line .. $101,375.

"I have no idea why," he said as he departed.

Over the next 7 days, I found I couldn't answer that question either.

09:35 EDT, WEDNESDAY: The Hummer is classified by the various federal agencies as a Class 3 truck.

All you need to know about that designation is that the Hummer doesn't have to meet car standards for safety. Doesn't have to meet much of any standard, in fact.

And it doesn't.

It doesn't even have air bags.

What it does have is weight on its side. At well over 3 tons, a Hummer has few equals among family vehicles on the road. Only large trucks would give pause. When 3 tons in motion impacts 2 tons in motion, 3 tons most often wins.

This is the 500-pound Sumo wrestler facing Woody Allen.

My money's on Sumo.

But just as Sumo would make me nervous if he wandered down narrow aisles in a fine China shop, this thing should make others nervous on the highway.

It's extraordinarily tall, to begin with, with high bumpers. This, of course, gives the Hummer amazing offroad capabilities to ford streams 30 inches deep, angle up steep slopes, crawl over fallen trees or creep over boulders.

But what contributes to slow-go becomes a liability for others if the two should meet accidentally. The force of a Hummer's massive weight could easily ride the tall Hummer up and over an average car -- with possibly fatal results to those in the car.

Sure, you feel safe in a Hummer. But those who must share a road with you don't.

You're a clutz. Your handling is compromised. Your acceleration power is nil. Your brakes are only so-so at high speeds. Your headlights are little better than a pair of flashlights taped to the hood. You are a menace. Sorry, but you are.

However...

I did notice that other cars stayed far, far away from my Hummer. I could part a sea of traffic. No one wants to strike a Hummer. Or be struck.

Guess that's a safety plus, huh?

10.41 EDT, THURSDAY: The surprise here is that cornering speed did not have to be severely compromised from behind the wheel of this high-rider. The actual g force measurement for a Hummer is a ho-hum .62, but the real-world experience seems better. Yes, you corner slower than in a car, or truck, but not so slow that you anger others.

Stopping requires a greater distance than a car and the Hummer shudders if you press hard on the brakes. But adaptation to a longer distance is easy and I never felt the Hummer couldn't stop in time. It behooves other drivers, however, to seriously think about darty maneuvers in front of large vehicles. They may not be able to stop before crawling up your backside.

In town, the Hummer's 86.5-inch width and 71.6-inch track make driving frightening. There is no room for distraction -- even for a moment. A driver must be constantly aware of lane position. The position of the front right wheel can't be guessed accurately, so navigation is by keeping the left wheel near the lane stripe.

A 53-foot turning radius means lots of stopping and backing up before pulling into any parking space large enough to accommodate a Hummer.

Frankly, any measurement of the Hummer onroad will do it an injustice. The Hummer is the most serious offroad vehicle ever offered the public as a production vehicle. It excels out there. Out there is where it belongs.

To that end, I took it as "out there" as you can get where I live and test. Tall sandhills, rutted roads, deep gulleys with washboard surfaces. As expected, nothing was a problem for the Hummer -- except roughness. Let's not pretend it is comfortable inside a vehicle making its way over a washboard surface. But comfort is not the most important factor under such conditions. No vehicle you can buy has more offroad capabilities than this one.

That's the only valid reason to buy a Hummer.

14:10 EDT, SUNDAY: Well, at least a Hummer will do 0 to 60.

It will take the Hummer almost 20 seconds to do it, but it will do it. It will also top out at 83 miles an hour.

The monster tires that are standard on a Hummer cause a recommended top speed of 65 miles per hour. But our tester had the $200 optional "highway" tires, which meant we could cruise interstates at legal limits. (And the nifty 17-inch aluminum wheels were an astonishing $2,457! A system to deflate and inflate them from the driver's seat added another $9,548.)

Ah but noise and vibration rear truly ugly heads at such speed. Car&Driver measured 81 decibels in a hard top Hummer at 70 miles an hour. Loud as that is, it seems even louder and is MUCH worse in the soft top (basically, 81 decibels is like shouting at someone standing next to you). My passenger and I simply could not converse, even shouting at each other. Forget listening to music!

Most of the noise comes from those tires, that also vibrate the entire Hummer. Every outside noise enters through the soft top, as well. Open one window for ventilation and the top flaps like a circus tent in a gale. And the constant clattering of the diesel can always be heard. It is particularly noisy on startup.

Vehicle vibration is non-stop. It can easily induce nausea. My wife tried to sleep in the passenger seat, but touching any surface with her head soon produced a headache. This is quite possibly the most uncomfortable travelling vehicle you could buy. (I know, I know .. that's not it's purpose.)

Come to a stop and you'll rock back and forth, back and forth. There are two fuel tanks, a 25-gallon main and 17-gallon auxiliary. The fuel in those huge tanks weighs enough to rock the Hummer as it sloshes about. Most disconcerting.

The monstrous 430 foot-pounds of torque give the Hummer enormous pulling power. They also help launch the heavy truck quickly. It easily tows heavy boats or trailers.

AM General says a winch on the front bumper -- a $2,688 option -- can hang a Hummer in mid-air if connected to an overhead object. Never got around to trying that...

19:02 EDT, SUNDAY: Elusive.

Real comfort in a Hummer is elusive.

It is far easier to find problems than outstanding features.

Begin with entry. There are no running boards to assist, and the step up height is above knee level for an average person. There is a high door sill, as well, which interferes with easy entry/exit. You'll have to pull yourself up to enter. And, hey, this monster has teeny little nail-breaker door handles!

The seats look good -- but that's all. They lack support, lateral or lumbar. Guarantee: You will exit with back pain after any amount of time in these.

And the "deluxe gray" interior tacked on $1,874 to the base Hummer price.

At night, reflections are a deadly danger. The upright windshield sees all -- front, side and rear -- and bounces it all back into a driver's view. Bugs seem magnetically attracted to the front of that windshield, where they deposit greasy smears that make matters worse. Side windows even reflect the instruments.

There are few storage places for cell phones, sunglasses, notepads, purses, etc. and they end up sliding around the interior somewhere in the middle of the first curve encountered.

The necessity for constant close attention to lane position is fatiguing.

Despite its huge exterior, there is little useful room inside a Hummer. Cubic-foot volume may be high, but it's deceptive. There are only four bucket seats and no further room for passengers. Drivetrain components take up the bulk of the Hummer's interior floor space. For every 100 cubic inches of space, an owner might could use 5.

And forget lowering the top. You'll never get it secured again in anything resembling a waterproof fashion.

The cover for the pickup bed in back secures with Velcro, making it fairly easy to open. A wooden bow supports the center of the canvas cover, and needs to be compressed to be removed. A ridiculously cheap solution in a $100,000 vehicle.

The plastic rear window harkens back about five decades. It unzips, but good luck. Once unzipped, there's no place to store it back there. Just stuff it behind the seats and watch the plastic crinkle into distortion.

Bang on the center of the steering wheel (the horn is on a stalk and will beep every time you set cruise control) and you'll feel the cheapness of the plastic abundant in a Hummer.

And look around for luxury touches expected at $100,000+. Where's the navigation system a vehicle like this could really use? Not present. Where's an onboard computer to tell me my real-world fuel mileage is well under 10 miles to a gallon of increasingly expensive diesel? Not present. Where are some decent instruments, ones not hidden from a driver's view? Not present.

What is all this money buying?

The answer is certainly not obvious inside a Hummer.

MULTIMEDIA

Hang on and get ready to ride inside and outside a Hummer, the ultimate urban commando vehicle, as it makes an assault on subdivision streets en route to a rendevous at Walmart. The video is in QuickTime format. The music will play jerkily as the movie downloads; for proper viewing, let the entire movie complete, then replay it!

12:59 EDT, TUESDAY: It is time for the Hummer to be picked up. No regrets time.

"Would you want one?" the neighborhood teenage car buff had asked me earlier.

"No," I said honestly.

"If you won the lottery and could have as many cars as you wanted, would you want one?"

"No," I again said. "It's not just money, although that would surely stop me. It just .. has no place in my life."

He looked at bit crestfallen. It was easy to imagine how delighted he would be to pull up to the high school parking lot in this eyeopener.

Once or twice.

And that's the key. The Hummer is an experience, like running river rapids or bungee jumping. Once is enough for most people. You may be glad you did it, but you may also never want to repeat the invigorating yet unsettling feelings derived from the venture.

So it is with a Hummer.

It's not a vehicle to want. It's a vehicle to need. If you need one, you'll know it. If you don't need one, fret not that you can't cough up the ridiculously overpriced cost of admission to the Cult of Arnold.

Why does it not surprise me that tax dollars buy the majority of these things?

'Nuff said.

Note on the photo: It's a photo illustration, with the water created in Adobe Photoshop. I was trying to think of a nice ad slogan for Hummer and came up with this illustration. Could happen. But, rest assured Hummer, I didn't test your vehicle this way!




Home, James