HUMMER

DUMB & HUMMER? Many reckon there’s no room on our roads for vehicles like the Hummer H3 but freedom of choice seems as noble a cause as any to Andy Enright.

Crikey. I haven’t received this many dirty looks since I arrived at my mother-in-law’s annual garden party with her dog crushed into the front wheel arch of my car. While the Hammie Incident has now been largely forgotten, every day behind the wheel of the Hummer H3 brings with it another slew of people who hate you on sight. It’s one of those cars. According to my non scientific research, for every admiring glance the H3 receives, you’ll get two or three glares of barely disguised loathing.

How we got to the Hummer H3 is interesting. Drawing its influence from the original Humvee military vehicle (HMMWV - a military term for High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle for the curious), the idea for a roadgoing Hummer was hatched when General Motors bought the AM General Corporation of South Bend, Indiana. This company manufactured Humvee vehicles for the US military and had started selling Hummer versions with slightly more creature comforts to civilians such as Arnold Schwarzenegger. The growth of the high end Sports Utility Vehicle market in the US and the brand equity of the Hummer name made the company an attractive target and in 2002 GM unveiled the Hummer H2. A loophole on 6000lb+ ‘commercial’ vehicles saw many business buyers able to tax deduct $38,000 of the car’s $50,000 list price and helped sales skyrocket. Based on tried and tested GM mechanicals, the H2 used a front suspension system similar to a GM Silverado truck while the rear end was similar to a GM half-tonne truck. It drove like a commercial vehicle too and although a few were imported to the UK, it was too big for inner city streets. The H3 packs the Hummer look and feel into a more manageable size and is now offered in right-hand drive form for the very first time priced from £26,495. ‘More manageable size’ should be put into perspective. This vehicle is still 1989mm wide, so piloting it around inner city streets is real heart in mouth stuff. As a guide, a Dodge Viper is 1,910mm wide. To really get a handle on the width of the H3, its girth is to a Range Rover what a Range Rover is to a Peugeot 207. The bluff sides of the H3 fall away leaving it to your imagination what lies beneath. The big mirrors are great or would be if I hadn’t clouted the door mirror irreparably on a makeshift sign advertising herbal remedies.

"My wife refused to ride in it, abandoning me for a bus.…."

Powered by a General Motors Vortec 3.7-litre five-cylinder petrol engine with twin overhead cams and variable valve timing, you get 244bhp at 5,600rpm and 328Nm of torque at a relatively heady 4,600rpm. Rather surprisingly, this is no lazy lugger. To make decent progress, you need to rev it hard. Give it everything and it’ll haul to 60mph in 9.7 seconds. There’s the choice of a five-speed manual gearbox or the preferable four-speed GM Hydra-Matic auto. Biofuel and Diesel H3s will follow. Traction control and StabililTrack stability control aim to keep the H3 dirty side down and its manufacturer claims it will ford water 407mm deep and features a front approach angle of 37.5 degrees. For the off roaders amongst you, the departure angle is 35.5 degrees and the breakover angle is 23.5 degrees. I suspect most buyers will be more concerned about whether 24-inch chrome spinner rims fit. Anybody who ever drove one of the original Hummers would have been amazed at its reverse-TARDIS ability. Huge on the outside, there was probably less useable room inside than you’d get in a Ford Focus. It was genuinely a triumph of lousy packaging. The H3 is several steps removed from the original and things are a good deal more conventional inside, without a transmission tunnel so wide you need to semaphore your passenger. It’s still rather American insofar as the plastics quality isn’t great, but the centre stack at least looks stylish with its brushed metal finish. It does have a style of its own and it’s not altogether unappealing. On a short off-road route, I managed to almost knock myself unconscious on the grab handle, thought better of it and got back on the blacktop. Other ergonomic glitches include awful rear visibility thanks to the tailgate-mounted spare wheel and a reduction in the Hummer’s total load lugging ability thanks to rear seats that don’t fold flat. The exterior styling is bluff and uncompromising with a front end that encourages traffic out of its path. The H3 is based on a Chevy Colorado pick up truck, so the underpinnings aren’t exactly cutting edge. What’s quite fascinating about the Hummer is that while to many it represents the unacceptable face of American bling, it’s in fact built at the Struandale Assembly Facility in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. General Motors has pumped over $100 million into the construction of this plant and the H3 is expected to pay its way. Early signs have been promising for the Hummer brand with around 2,000 vehicles being sold across Europe annually. With carbon-dioxide based taxation becoming increasingly stringent, the UK may not be one of the bigger markets for the H3 but it will still sell in reasonable numbers, especially to moneyed urban youth who see existing SUVs as being a little old hat. This generation won’t mind that the Hummer isn’t packed to the gills with luxury equipment. It’s got the basics and anything additional, such as flat screen LCDs running off a Sony PS3 or a stereo capable of tripping seismographs in the Marshall Islands, represents scope for personalisation. In the period that I drove the car, I was somewhat amazed to have averaged 15.6 miles per gallon. If asked beforehand what my mixed city and country driving would net, I’d have hazarded a guess at 10-11mpg. The official figure is just over 20mpg although you would need to be saintly to get anywhere near that. Insurance and emissions taxation are both correspondingly expensive and depreciation figures really depend on the whims of fashion. As it stands, the Hummer H3 looks like commanding quite a healthy resale value, although the Chancellor of the Exchequer will doubtless be doing everything in his aegis to affect this. As offensive as it is to some and as irrelevant as it is to virtually all, the Hummer H3 still emerges as strangely appealing. Perhaps it’s entirely because society is increasingly conditioning us to spurn these things that the contrarian in me can see its qualities. It’s enormous fun to rumble up alongside prigs in Priuses and start revving the 3.7-litre engine just to see them start working themselves up into a rage of self righteousness. I know that’s childish in the extreme but it’s good sport. My wife refused to ride in it, abandoning me for a bus. My friends think I look like a crack dealer while driving it and my neighbour’s jaw dropped in sheer horror when it fronted up outside his house. The Hummer H3 isn’t going to win many popularity contests but if you want a vehicle that’s surprisingly capable off road and which thumbs its nose at convention, there’s not a lot to touch it.

Facts At A Glance CAR: Hummer H3 PRICE: £26,495-£31,495 – on the road INSURANCE GROUP: 18 CO2 EMISSIONS: 327g/km PERFORMANCE: Max Speed 99mph / 0-60mph 9.7s FUEL CONSUMPTION: (urban) 15.3mpg / (extra urban) 25.6mpg / (combined) 20.4mpg STANDARD SAFETY FEATURES: four wheel ABS, traction control, stability control, twin front airbags WILL IT FIT IN YOUR GARAGE?: Length/width/heightmm 4782/1989/1912mm