Hummer
	• Hummer H2-It's No H1 Humvee • Hummer H3-Street vs. Off Road • Hummer H1 Alpha

Irony you want? Irony you’re gonna get, my friend. When the military brass finally decided in the 1970s that the Jeep needed to be put out to pasture, it was replaced with the Humvee, the vehicle that became known to us civilians as the Hummer H1. Now we have the H3, a much smaller, much more civilized $30,000 offering from GM, trying to bust into the midsize, tough SUV market dominated by the Jeep Grand Cherokee.

The guys at Jeep must be falling out of their chairs and rolling on the floor at this turn of events, too, because the H3 can’t touch it.

 

Once again, GM has pulled an existing platform down from the shelf, this one from the Colorado and Canyon trucks. They tugged on this and pushed on that to create a slightly longer and wider platform, and then hung some shrink-fit Hummer duds over it. The result is a Hummer that you can actually maneuver with relative ease through parking lots and drive-thrus without scraping bits of yourself onto other cars. The steering is much more responsive than that found in the mashed-potatoes system of the H2, and the turning radius is commendably small.

So just putter around the neighborhood, steering your H3 and enjoy yourself, because out on the road with the rest of us, it’s a lot less fun. Under all that buffed, busy bodywork up front there’s an anemic 3.5-liter inline-5 generating 220 bhp and 225 lb-ft of torque. We don’t understand the choice. Two things puzzle us here. First, there are 3.5-liter engines all over the place generating 280, 300, even 320 horsepower without working up a sweat. What do they know that GM doesn’t? Secondly, if that really is the best they can manage with this engine, what the hell is it doing in a midsize SUV that weighs two-and-a-half tons? It’s certainly not saving fuel, with a real-world average of 15 miles per gallon. And accelerating in traffic, it renders the H3 a garbage scow surrounded by jet skis, the “efficient” Hummer taking more than 10 seconds to lumber past 60. Tell us please, GM: what were you thinking here?

Get yourself out of town and into the rough with this thing, and the H3 starts to make sense. The suspension system is fully up to crawling over all manner of nasty terrain, the transmission – an ancient 4-speed beefed up with a “crawler” ratio – combines with a pair of locking differentials and ABS-based traction control to provide very capable control on steep grades, up or down. This is the vehicle’s home turf, and it suits the H3’s macho exterior design.

 

But honestly, how many H3s will ever scuff a skid plate in the Nevada desert? A fraction of one percent, is our guess. Hummer long ago stopped being the singular off road wonder that its military forebear suggested. Jeep’s Grand Cherokee, Nissan’s Pathfinder, and Toyota’s 4Runner are all generations ahead of the H3 in niggling little details like daily functionality, comfort, amenities, build quality, fuel efficiency and value. And they all provide as much off road prowess as you’re likely to need on a regular basis. The H3 is a one-trick pony. It performs that trick very well, scrambling around Sergio Leone country just as sure-footed as the absurd H2, only more nimbly and for less money. Fine. The H3 can go places most SUVs can’t. But it almost never does, so what’s the point?

 

 

…because it’s the most intelligent vehicle Hummer makes.

 

…because “intelligent Hummer” is an oxymoron.