(first posted 6/18/2015) Welcome to Part 4 of the series called “Too Big Even For America”, where we explore cars that went out of their way to demonstrate that bigger is not always better.
It’s all about image, isn’t it? “Dress for success”, “Fake it ‘till you make it” and other similar adages have been around for decades, reminding you that even if you’re the best at what you do it’s a lot less likely that you’ll be taken seriously if you don’t look the part. Having the wrong image at the wrong time can be nothing short of disastrous – as the Hummer H2 demonstrated.
First, we have to address the elephant in the room. No, the Hummer isn’t actually *that* physically big. Not as big as the Ford Excursion and certainly not as big as the International CXT that have taken the spotlight on earlier articles in the series. The equivalent Suburban with which the H2 shared showrooms was almost 19 inches longer. The Hummer had it beat for width and height by a couple of inches but it’s nothing to write home about. Like the Excursion though, it did have a bit of a weight problem, tipping the scales at 6614 lbs. That is about 900 lbs. more than what the Suburban weighed and again, not the worst offender in that regard.
The construction of the H2 has something to do with it. The H2 walks a sort of middle ground between the light-duty 1500 series and the Heavy Duty 2500 series chassis (a 2000 series, if you will). The front bit is based on the 2500 and the rear on the 1500, all connected by a section exclusive to the Hummers. Essentially, they found a way to sidestep the problems Ford faced when they used their Super Duty frame. In the engine compartment you got the same engines that you had on the ordinary GMT-900 SUVs. Depending on the year you had either a 6.0 or a 6.2-liter V8. The latter was even mated to a modern 6-speed automatic gearbox, promising better efficiency and an improvement in highway fuel economy.
The interior was much improved over its predecessor, but that’s to be expected when a car is specifically developed for civilian use instead of being adapted to it. By itself it’s nothing special, what with it being essentially the same interior that you got on a well-optioned Tahoe or Yukon but with some extra garnish thrown in it, such as the very macho gear lever replacing the normal column shifter you got on its platform siblings and the clock which seemed to be a Hummer exclusive.
I am guessing exclusivity was not what the people in charge of the Hummer division had in mind when they launched the H2 to the public. No, that was the Escalade’s job, the H2’s job was to broaden the appeal of the Hummer brand and sell to the off-roading enthusiast. Whether that enthusiast actually did any off-roading or not. To that end the new Hummer car was accompanied by a whole merchandising lineup. It’s all rather sad really, like Mercedes-Benz trying to sell you a hoodie (incidentally, they will totally sell you a hoodie), but this merchandise transcended logic and sane reasoning. The most egregious and baffling of these was the Hummer cologne. Most disturbingly even now, half a decade after the Hummer brand has left, you can still buy Hummer cologne. It takes all kinds to make a world. And GM really did push the merchandising angle with the Hummer brand. Which is a direct cause of the reason why I chose the H2 for the finale of this series. Timing.
The H2 did achieve popularity through its perceived decadence. Like the Escalade, it found a large periphery demographic with rappers and those who embraced that image. It was also featured on movies such as Be Cool…
…TV Shows such as CSI:Miami…
…And, for reasons I’m sure make sense when you see the amount of money that exchanged hands, video games such as Need For Speed.
The sturdy construction and glitzy image also meant it found favor as a party limousine.
But timing is everything and the Hummer H2 missed it spectacularly. It was released smack dab in the moment when oil prices were climbing alarmingly fast on their way to $100/barrel. When the critics of SUVs became unbearably loud. When the economy tanked. When the fuel prices started to rise and the world did its greatest push so far to protect the environment, reduce emissions and stop global warming.
Celebrities and the like were shunning large SUVs and luxury cars in favor of the new car to be seen in, a compact Toyota with a bunch of batteries and cheap interior plastic. It turns out Paul just jumped the gun when he used a compact Japanese car in Beverly Hills. However, the flipside of all of this environmental automotive consciousness was that large SUVs were now the enemy, and out of all of them, someone had to be the main target.
I ask you, what better target to showcase everything that is wrong with SUVs than a large, extremely conspicuous SUV that was most commonly seen in bright yellow, was as publicized and merchandised as possible and whose owners would be more than likely not concerned with environmental issues? All the merchandising and brand positioning that GM had made for the Hummer brand collapsed unto itself. The Hummer brand became non-viable overnight and when GM went bust and tried to sell it to the Chinese, they couldn’t agree on a deal and Hummer was shut down for good.
So? What have we learned throughout this series? Well, the stereotype that bigger is always better in America is a big fat lie. Whether they’re really way too big and ungainly like the International CXT or simply perceived as such like the Hummer, there is such a thing as “too big”. It also reminds us that no matter how much planning and development manufacturers is done for new vehicles, situations far beyond their control could be the proverbial spanner in their works and ruin all the hard work that they’ve done. The collective definition of “big” may change but it seems once your car is past 220 inches or thereabouts, it’s a shot in the dark whether the market will respond it.
As we’ve demonstrated here, they probably won’t.
These were the epitome of poor taste in the early-2000s. And their stereotypical high-testosterone, anger management, whey protein by the barrel-buying, gym-rat with a beer gut, drivers were even more unbearable.
Oddly enough, someone who worked at the Whole Foods I worked at in college drove one. Always seemed very counter-intuitive of Whole Foods’ values.
100x this. This isn’t a case like BMW where a good car is ruined by stereotypically awful drivers.
The H2 was a cynical marketing exercise that landed the buyers and image they wanted , right about the time that image went from being endearing and home-spun (‘merica!!), to over-the-top unbearable, and despised.
They are uglier than a bucket of a**holes.
Exactly. The H2 and H3 were poser-mobiles. Cadillac hit peak tailfin in 59, the H2 was the peak of faux macho SUV.
To borrow the line from Top Gun “Son, your marketing is writing checks your product can’t cash”.
One of my favorite what-ifs of the 00s is what if the H3 was a Wrangler/Defender competitor with a front axle and a hard core version with off road capability comprable to the Wrangler Rubicon.
Because of its width & weight the H2 was actually worse off road that the GM trucks it shared platforms with. When a $1500 XJ Cherokee can run rings around the H2 you just dropped $50k there is a problem.
I guess that not eveyone who works at WF drives a Prius.
It was the meat managers……..meat managers always drive bro-dozers 🙂
They became the car of choice for pimps and similar people here in Vienna, so the image issue was international right from the start.
Thanks, but I prefer the H1. The H2 and H3 was better looking than the H1, but they both lacked two things that the H1 had that I liked: A; the H1 had 4 wheel independent suspension, and the other was the option of a diesel engine.
The H1 was probably more off road capable than either of the smaller ones. I am not sure that the H1 was as capable as the military version, but perhaps.
I thought the H1 was ONLY available with a diesel, but I just looked on Wikipedia and it appears you are correct, a 5.7L Vortec gas V8 was available. I believe most of them came with the 6.5L diesel, which isn’t such a good thing. The very last ones made came with 6.6L Duramax diesel. Those are probably the ones to have.
The H1 also had a central tire inflation system. I presume that was problematic and leaked. A neighbour of mine had one. It was usually in his driveway with four flat tires.
You are correct on all counts BOC. A great writer over on Jalopnik, Doug Demuro, has recently gone through the process of buying an H1, and he purchased the hard to find gas model because of the problems that plague the 6.5 diesel. The Duramax equipped H1 Alphas are still $100k+, some of the nicer ones go for closer to $200k. He also notes that apparently 100% of those tire inflation systems have issues.
http://jalopnik.com/buying-a-hummer-is-a-lot-harder-than-you-might-think-1690595197
Or you could just yank the 6.5 Duramax and drop in a proven 5.9 Cummins or 5.2 Isuzu.
Which is a project that most people, even car guys like myself, would not take on due to the cost and complexity. Life’s too short.
I’ve got a 1990 F350 crew cab 4×4 with a 460 and would love nothing better than to do the Fummins conversion on it. But I rarely drive it, so it doesn’t make any sense. Plus I don’t have the time.
The Hummer, like the Saturn, was a dubious move on GM part. There was for some reason a market for the big Hummer (H1) and so GM added the H2, making for a larger market for the brand. The H2 looked like it would be a better off road vehicle than a Suburban (or the short Suburban [Tahoe]). But the real thing about the H2 was that it did not look like the Suburbans, which were found everywhere. I think the limited number of Hummers made them more appealing to those who bought them.
There is a Hummer in two parking spaces near the Fashion Bug, but I can’t say anything on the gender of the driver. Out here, every person who drives a Hummer parks like that!
Actually, this one’s closer to using one space than most of the ones out here will ever be!
“To big for America”! So think how it fits in to the UK?. There is a RHD SouthAfrican built H2 in my small town used as a dally driver!.
Glasgow seems to be full of stretched Hummers with screaming chavettes dangling out of windows/sunroof.
There was also a businessman (bar or nightclub owner, iirc) in Edinburgh a couple of years ago who was parking wherever he liked, because the council’s 7.5 tonne DAF Hiabs couldn’t lift his Hummer.
Come to think of it, there are probably a few American SUVs they couldn’t lift, but he made the press because illegal parking was clearly his main hobby.
Why is it in a culture that has long had “do your own thing” as a First Principle, people think it’s necessary to impress total strangers in the 2nd most costly purchase they ever make? Maybe conformism (supposedly at its height during the ’50s) has merely mutated instead of died off.
Anyone looking to be impressed by the car I drive, except for technical reasons, is not someone I want anything to do with.
This is my whole problem with people buying big crossovers and SUVs verses minivans for their family.
Sure, someone will step in and say “but I need to tow my boooooat”, but what is that 0.5% of the use of 0.5% of buyers?
Buy a minivan to schlep the kids!! You’re parents, no one thinks you’re “cool” anymore. The responsible choice is to buy the safest most efficient thing possible, the minivan, not a compromised CUV to satisfy your waning vanity.
It must be admitted that the SUV is good for regions with enough inclement weather to justify 4WD & higher ground clearance, or for heavy towing. But this comes at the cost of reduced efficiency.
Yeah, and if you need to tow a boat or camper, even if it’s just once a month, you need something to tow it with. Period.
But, that said, most CUVs are bought for image alone. They are cramped and/or expensive compared to minivans.
You can probably tow the Titanic with this thing. Impressed? Not!
Do you think people tow stuff to try to impress you?
Well if a CUV is someone’s idea of ‘cool’ then Id argue a total lack of taste or coolness to start with. I think a CUV is a bit more practical than a comparable sedan…but I could go on for hours how the typical 4 door sedan is the most worthless, useless and ill concieved bodystyle of vehicle…
The H2 always looked clucky and soft to me compared to the H1, which was quite clearly a purely purposeful military spec design. The H2 took the front end of the H1, softened it and then chromed it for some reason, and then fitted a ton of that GM exclusive black plastic trim everywhere. I always considered it a posourmobile when it came out, made for people who want the image of tough but were too wussy to get the H1 when they could.
Today I have mixed feelings on the H2. I was glad when GM dumped Hummer but I always felt it’s vilification by the green movement was equally as shallow. The funny thing with the H2 is everything that people despise about it is an exact funhouse mirror of what people despise about the Prius – Unmistakable looks, obnoxious owner base(not necessarily the case today, we’re talking the era both vehicles coexisted), and both had shallow reasoning for their popularity – “Mine’s a military vehicle and indestructible!”, “mine’s most definitely going to save the planet someday!”. Whether or not one side of the coin is more rational than the other, the prickishness they represented was identical for the time.
Your second paragraph is a good summary. While I’ve been cut off by and tailgated by my share of Hummers, I’ve never really experienced any arrogance from Prius owners. This might be because people were slow to adopt the Prius where I live, it didn’t really gain traction in our market until the 2007 gas price spike. The people that I know that bought them typically traded in well used Civics, and were simply looking for good fuel economy and space utilization, not a social statement.
We are a practical, if sometimes dull people here in the American Midwest.
I’m guessing there were some pretty difficult Californians driving the earlier Prius cars – there is certainly a lot of ire about them out there.
Attitudes will certainly evolve regarding the Prius. My daughter recently took drivers ed, and drive both a new Ford Fiesta and a Prius. She loved the Fiesta and found the Prius a weird experience and hard to see out the back. In ten years she might be buying a new small car, and my guess is she is more likely to look at a Ford product. The Prius will run its course, just like everything else.
The Fiesta is a nice car, but there were two things I didn’t like about it:
1. The shift lever is too long.
2. The motor is a bit loud.
Otherwise, I liked it a lot.
I don’t think the Prius is a flash in the pan. It’s one of the biggest selling cars in the world.
I’m still a bit wary of Fords, though otherwise they seem to have the best range of cheap European compacts in the States, except maybe VW. BTW, where’s the Polo?
Prius is the best pure hybrid, no question. What intrigues me is, if more gasoline models push their MPG into the ’40s, it might be enough to eliminate the total cost of ownership advantage of the hybrid (for some drivers anyway). Prius prices are pushing $30K now.
We like the Prius V’s enlarged cargo area, but its MPG is not a lot better than that of the more spacious Fit, at least on the highway. And I’d probably enjoy driving the Fit more.
I drove “rest of world” manual Fiestas in Australia and really liked them. OTOH, my mother in law has a US spec auto Fiesta and I’m not keen on it. The main problem is the transmission, which seems to change gear unnecessarily, and laboriously.
And yes, the engine seems loud and harsh.
Here in OR its a mixed bag of prius drivers: smug and arrogant holier than thou types who hog the left lane out of sheer contempt for the less righteous are still alive and well in this area. But its giving way to either taxicabs which arent TOO bad, or the elderly which you do NOT want to be behind. Id guess that any prius on its 1st or 2nd owner is 90% likely to be driven by someone with an AARP card on them. The only younger drivers clearly have it as a hand me down or a cheap beater. In any case, I dont like them anywhere near me on the road, since theyre usually like speed bumps.
Outside of the occasional ass hogging up multiple parking spots, Hummer owners typically arent too bad.
Where I live, lane hogging isn’t restricted to any type of car. Yrs. ago, I once drove a German exchange-student around in So. Cal., & he asked why Americans drive in the left lane. I had no answer for him then, & I still don’t now. Is yielding simply too humiliating for Americans?
From what I observed yrs. ago, Europeans seem very disciplined about this, & not just on highways. They move almost completely onto the shoulder on 2-lane roads if someone wants to pass. Very rare here.
Here in NJ Priusses-or is that Prii-are notorious for staying in the left lane. Everywhere.When you finally get to pass one, the driver usually gives YOU a dirty look. I`m not one to judge a person by the car they drive, but……..
We don’t just seem very disciplined in Europe. We’re required to move to the nearside lane in most territories, leaving the offside for overtaking. The same technicality applies on three-lane carriageways, hence the unending vitriol aimed (quite justifiably) at middle-lane cruisers.
French autoroutes are the best places to see this in action, with cars darting out of the nearside lane, past the car in front, back in again, forward 500 metres, back out again, and so on.
I love driving in the left lane because if your on a 65 mph (for instance) road, you can set it at 70 or so and usually drive completely unimpeded without ever having to change lanes. Only problem I ever have are the jackasses that think they need to be doing 90 and think I should move over for them.
If I want to putz along for whatever reason, then I’m always in the right lane.
dominic, that’s why Minnesota put up signs that say “Slower Traffic Keep Right”. It’s not just common sense, it’s state law here. From drivers.com:
“The Chief of the Minnesota State Patrol says that two wrongs don’t make a right when it comes to driving in the left lane. Col. Anne Beers argues that speeding in the left lane is wrong, but it’s also wrong to camp there and refuse to move to the right so faster-moving traffic can pass. “We know there is aggressive behavior out on the highways. Why contribute to that?” she said. “Let someone who wants to go faster go by you and your stress stays under control.” “
But self-control is no longer emphasized as a virtue in America. You’re supposed to Express Yourself, no matter how repulsive that may be.
Because here (Austria), if you hog the left lane two things will happen: (i) road rage and (ii) a hefty fine if the police notices you. Germany is the same but even more intense, as the fast boys in BMWs/MBs/Audis/Porsches doing more than 100 MPH get v e r y irate if someone blocks them – and rightfully so. Left lane hogging is one of the more dangerous things one can do on an Autobahn where – at times – there is more than 70 MPH speed difference between the slowest and fastest vehicles.
Prius drivers now are pretty much regular commuters, only in the last few years I no longer have to avoid being behind one on the highway or at a traffic light, 5+ years ago though they almost seemed like they were teaming up with Hummer drivers to make your drive miserable – You’d get stuck in a lane with a Prius going 54mph with traffic flowing at 70 and you’d then get sandwiched by a H2 behind you who’s convinced tailgating the car behind the obnoxiously slow car will somehow speed up both.
This is suburban Chicago, and there were a whole lot of both back then. Hummer’s are gone now, and given the fad driven nature of the original owners it wouldn’t surprise me if they all picked up Priuses when their H2 became REALLY unfashionable, luckily in a Prius their obnoxious driving style is basically rendered neutral lol
I once got a short ride in a Mil-spec M998 Humvee. It felt like not much would stop it in Sonoran Desert terrain. Its steering wheel looks right out of the 1960s.
Still, these things are about as wide as a Peterbilt, consuming almost the entire lane on secondary roads. Given this, I have to wonder how well they do in certain urban combat zones. If IEDs are around, drive a S. African Marauder instead. Hummers weren’t designed for that sort of thing.
Priuses by now are so popular, generalization about their owners is difficult. They aren’t particularly exciting to drive, but then, neither are their Corolla stablemates. The Prius V is tempting for its cargo space, but the Honda Fit’s is larger & it’s closing the economy gap.
Nevertheless, if a Prius runs into me, it’s not going to climb over my roof and crush me like a bug.
Problem with the H1 is its ridiculously wide…which unless youre out in the desert or on a prairie is going to hang you up offroad. Also, the suspension design is prohibitively expensive to modify for better performance. VERY rare to see an offroader get used offroad without a lot of mods to dial it in.
The H2 and H3 were based on questionable underpinnings but at least its feasible to modify them to work better.
Both have an “obnoxious owner base” (eh, I’ll let that slide a bit) but one is way more likely to view, and use, their vehicle as a four-wheeled threat to others.
I’m probably naive but I think there is a market in the U.S. For serious off-road vehicles, even if they’re purchased more for image than actual use. The Toyota Tacoma TRD Offroad with Bilsteins, e-locker and the Jeep Wrangler Rubicons with Dana 44 axles, lockers, 4:1 transfer are two examples. While the H1 was very capable, it was crude and way too big for real trail use, at least anywhere but the desert. I wheeled with one once, and we were often held up as it tried to squeeze through gaps that even my Land Cruiser wagon just breezed through. The H2 and H3 were available with off-road packages which made them very capable, but the 22″ wheel crowd and chrome bling crowd seemed to overwhelm any serious off-road image and in the end GM didn’t even bother marketing that aspect of the smaller Hummers. I have a friend with a 5 cylinder H3 which I’ve driven; it has nice seats but otherwise a mediocre driving experience and very crowded inside for its size.
I was always a bit perplexed that GM executives green lighted the Hummer brand. You just know that high oil price spikes will come and go, and this would be a natural lightning rod for all the comments about “what American automakers do wrong.”
I don’t defend the Hummer. It is ostentatious, even ugly to my eye. I sat in a few at auto shows and space utilization was pretty terrible. And, while I’m slow to typify drivers based on their cars, the men – and maybe especially the women – that drove these seemed to be among the bigger jack asses on the road.
I say drove these past tense, as the recession and fuel price environment did seem to take the coolness factor out of these, even for the rather tone deaf demographic that bought them. Cool and trendy until about 2006, and up for sale by about 2008.
I still see one very occasionally, usually in terrific condition. More often then not, these were playthings of the well off, and the serious family hauling and towing duties were left to the Suburbans of the world.
One addition to the article, Hummer did not typically share space with Suburbans in showrooms. GM went out of its way to insist that dealers build specific format stores / showrooms to accommodate this high end / high margin product. The stores actually incorporated a big letter H built into the facade, rendering the showrooms pretty useless when the brand was dissolved.
Our major local Chevy and Cadillac dealer has separate showrooms for these brands, and added a third for Hummer when they took on the franchise. When they were stuck with the Hummer showroom, they rebuilt the front without the H, moved Cadillac into the old Hummer store, and turned the old Cadillac building into a huge used car center. It’s a pretty goofy looking Cadillac store if you ask me.
Not our local store, but the typical Hummer store look……..
Yeah, our old Hummer dealership is the coolest looking pre-owned Chevrolet lot in town now 🙂
It looks like the building is as gaudy as the car! To me, that just screams something of an ego trip.
I get the rugged SUV idea, but I think they swung, and hit a foul ball into the Escalade crowd.
A quick check of the list ‘o’ Craig shows that the H2 tends to command a $5K premium over the same model year Suburban. I guess that the “distinctive” look is still worth more even now.
But, I wonder if this thought of mine is true……..
The Hummers are more likely to have been garage queens and in good shape, while the typical used ‘Burb has had its wheels driven off.
More Hummer-based merchandise: One could get Hummer prescription sunglasses, in a leather Hummer-imprinted case. My other half has a pair; it was a way for him to get stylish polarized, reflective-coated sunglasses in a progressive prescription.
At least the H2 was still assembled by AM General (with parts supplied by GM), the same company that designed and manufactured the military Humvee and civilian Hummer H1. My understanding is that the H3 was basically a reskin of the Chevy Colorado, built on the same GM assembly line.
My brother was telling me that most H2’s got a rear air-ride suspension system. This is not well supported in the aftermarket, and repair parts through the GM dealer are astronomically priced. They’ve had enough of these come through the shop where he works that they’ve fabricated their own parts to repair the system at a more reasonable cost.
It was likely an ill-fated attempt to boost falling Hummer sales, but just the idea of the H3 was even more preposterous and uncalled for. Like if SMART decided to come out with a full-size car.
In my opinion, the H3 was measurably better than the H2, at least in concept. It was better as an off-road vehicle, smaller, more practical, cheaper. Essentially it was a Hummer without all the disadvantages of a Hummer.
Well, without most of them, the windows were still pathetically small giving the box on wheels poor visibility.
I’ve long suspected that the GMC Terrain was originally intended to have been a Hummer but it went through the same prelaunch change of plans as the Edsel Comet and the 2nd gen Eagle Vision.
It should be remembered that a lot of these H2s were bought in order to take advantage of the large business tax write-off for vehicles with a GVW of over 6000 pounds. All sorts of professionals were buying Hummers and saving thousands of dollars as long as it was used at least 50% for business.
There was also supposed to be an H4, the size of the Jeep Wrangler and intended to be direct competition. That could have been interesting.
HX is what it wouldve been called. It looked a lot like those stylized ‘jeeps’ from the old school GI Joe toyline. A few prototypes were used in the Transformers movies. Real shame they were stillborn, it wouldve offered real competition for the Wrangler…something its never really had.
That would have been interesting just from the standpoint of styling, the Hummer face was essentially the Jeep Wrangler face from H1 to H3, right down to the single round headlights and 7 slot grille. Had the H4 come out targeting that segment I can’t imagine it not being recieved as a blatant knock off, not to mention the potential legal issues.
Chrysler sued Hummer over that grille, and lost.
It made Chrysler look pretty stupid, too. The similarities between the H1 and the Jeep were more than just grille deep. Take a good look at the body tub from an H1 and a CJ-7. Its as if someone chopped up 2 CJ-7s and frankenstiened them into one vehicle.
Given that AM General was spun off from AMC Jeep it seems fair enough.
The classic Willys MB 9-slot grille was borrowed from Ford; it was a stamping cheaper to fabricate.
These Hummers arent without their faults. As an offroader, they’re a bit impractical and the suspension is pure family grade Tahoe. As something that looks cool and can tow a decent load while emiting a nice nasty exhaust note after you install some pipes, I can see the appeal over bulbous jelly bean shaped tahoes and expeditions all day long. The H3 in theory SHOULD have been the ideal GM based Jeep fighter, but again, the underpinnings were rotten, being based on the Trailblazer/Colorado.
The elephant in the room here is that Hummer made a LOT of money in its short run. This is an educated speculation on my part, but anyone with any sense just KNOWS that the death of Hummer was orchestrated in backdoor deals during the bailout. Only by mixing politics and business can you kill off something that makes money while birthing an abomination like the Volt that has lost money faster than GM could set it on fire. Its amazing how long a failure can stay on life support when its got an IV drip of taxpayer money dumped into it.
As G.S. alludes to, the downfall of this truck and Hummer as a whole is one of a politically incorrect image.
I share the same speculation. GM was a very large beacon of hatred by the green movement in the 00s, Starting with the EV1 fiasco, which many to this day consider a grand conspiracy to kill the electric car, then post record profits on big SUVs, all while sharing showrooms with an embarrassing and underdeveloped car lineup, and then Hummer, the ridiculous Schwarzenegger mobile that was cool in it’s obscurity in the 90s with the H1, now is a full blown division with full blown dealerships and selling a mass production version, the H2 by the boatload. One can see the point of the hatred from environmental groups. Once the lobbying for the baillout happened I have no doubt in my mind the yay was given with Hummer’s elimination being a key motivator for certain votes.
You’re trying to re-write history through your red-tinted glasses. Hummer was “dead” a year before the bankruptcy. See my comment below.
Which part am I trying to rewrite? GM was a beacon for wasteful boastful vehicles at that time, there’s even a whole chapter about it in the 2006 “documentary” Who killed the electric car?. The fact that Hummer was under review before the bailout doesn’t mean it wasn’t a sacrificial lamb. As I recall(and quickly just verified) Hummer’s official fate(no longer being part of GM) was announced in the very same statement on the very day the bankruptcy was announced, June 1 2009.
Plus it’s speculation, I said as much in the first 5 words of my reply, I have no desire or intention to rewrite history, I just was responding that I shared a similar thought on the matter, given that the nature of politics tends to be underhanded and skeevy enough for a (quite reviled) car division to be sacrificed to cement a deal.
Do you even remember how it went down? Or did you at the time?
On June 1, 2009, GM anounced Hummer would be discontinued. It was bleeding massive amounts of red ink. Who would want to continue it; the world had changed, gas was up, and that fad was truly over.
In October, GM announced that they had sold Hummer for $150 million to the Chinese. Good news; some cash to throw into the bankruptcy pot. But of course, it was wishful thinking, as the buyer was not a credible one.
In Feb 2010, GM announced that the sale was dead, and all other sale prospects were not viable. End of story.
Hummer was effectively dead well before the bail out, and GM was desperate to ditch it and raise some cash. Politics had nothing to do with it. You think Hummer would be viable today? Not.
It cost a lot of money to support a whole division. Why do you think Olds, Saturn, Saab and Pontiac are dead. Politics? No. Big financial losses.
Sure, the govt. committee wanted GM to have the best possible c]shot at being profitable. Hummer would have just been a millstone. Good riddance. You think anyone at GM is crying because the govt. took Hummer away?
Paul, you’re coming at me with a condescending tone assuming I’m defending Hummer, I’m not, and no I don’t think the division would have survived through that period regardless. Would it be viable today? If it were severely reorganized enough, with a viable CUV for that currently red hot segment, who knows?
Hummer had a shit image 7 years ago, not a shit image from reliability, quality, driveability or being outdated, as are quite often key aspects of many of GM’s more recent failures, it was loathed because of what it represented(which wasn’t unfounded) and was easy to point to and say (in Tony Montana accent) “That’s the bad guy!” The question today would be whether that stigma would still be attached IF the Hummer were miraculously here today, the negative stigma of Hybrids certainly has faded since then, so you never know…
One thing’s for sure though, every last person in the world knows what a Hummer is when it’s mentioned, so there is brand recognition, tell a random stranger to draw a 08 Pontiac or a 04 Olds or one of the final Saabs and you’ll get stumped faces, tell them to draw a Hummer and there’s a good chance they’ll nail it.
And finally, no I don’t think anyone at GM today is crying about the govt. taking Hummer away. GM is a business and the bottom line is what matters, Politicians on the other hand tend to think they change the world for the better, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if there were a few involved in the deal back then who pat them selves on the back for making sure Hummer won’t be back as much as they do for preventing the economic fallout of letting GM die *SPECULATION*
This is an educated speculation on my part, but anyone with any sense just KNOWS that the death of Hummer was orchestrated in backdoor deals during the bailout. Only by mixing politics and business can you kill off something that makes money
That’s what Mopar Rocker said and you agreed with.
That’s classic right-wing conspiracy theory. “the guvmint took Hummer away because it was anti-environmental” Which is total BS.
Turn it the other way: you think the guvmint would have killed Hummer if it had been a solidly profitable division? No way! The pushback would have been huge, and rightfully so.
There isn’t a shred of evidence to support your classic anti-government conspiracy theory. I covered the bailout very closely at TTAC. Show me some evidence, and maybe I won’t come off so condescending.
Bob Lutz says losing Pontiac WAS a political move.
http://jalopnik.com/gm-knew-pontiac-was-on-the-ropes-before-the-feds-ordere-1453820705
LTD: you obviously didn’t read the article, or even the headline. GM knew Pontiac was on the ropes….
The gist of the article supports what I’ve been saying: that there was no way the govt. was going to bail out money-losing divisions. And Pontiac, Hummer, and Saab were money losers. From the article:
Even so, today’s car aficionados still wonder this: Why did GM kill Pontiac and Hummer and sell Saab, but keep GMC and Buick? The answer is that the first three were not profitable and viable in the marketplace, while the last two were. It’s really pretty simple. GM knew that, but it took their taxpayer-funded saviors to get them to euthanize some of their flagging brands.
You somehow think that GM should have gotten even more bailout money to keep money-losing divisions afloat. They knew these divisions were dead before they even asked for the bailout.
Paul, you really should dial the attitude back, as XR7 also noted. We’re talking cars, no need for the venom.
It’s been widely reported the government forced GMs hand on a number of the closures. GM ignored the writing on the wall before, just because it was obvious prebailout doesn’t mean GM would have necessarily followed through if left to their own devices. Either way, a good decision is a good decision.
LTD: We’re talking cars
No we’re not, in this thread. MoparRocker and Matt started it with their conspiracy theory that the government killed Hummer in some back-room deal because it was anti-environmental. All the facts contradict that.
And then you jump in with Bob Lutz says losing Pontiac WAS a political move. That’s NOT what Bob Lutz really said; as you make it sound like GM was going to just keep humming along with Pontiac and the other brands.
Yes, the govt. insisted that GM do what they should have done a long time ago: get their house of fallen cards together; meaning ditch the dead money-losing brands.
That’s very different than trying to make poor Hummer or GM look like the victims of a back room deal because Hummer was so anti-environmental. Pure BS.
This is why I don’t allow political comments: they’re inevitably posted by those that don’t know the facts or chose to ignore them. I really should just take down this whole comment thread. Because I’m quite tired of trying to point out how utterly flawed the thinking is.
Yes, let’s stick to cars. You want to tell MoparRocker and Matt that for me?
just because it was obvious prebailout doesn’t mean GM would have necessarily followed through if left to their own device
Ummm…if GM had been left to its own devices, it wouldn’t be here anymore. It was completely out of options. That sure wouldn’t have saved Hummer or Pontiac. 🙂
You’re not incorrect at all, but you should disagree with a little bit more decorum. What makes this site so great is the on-point comments. Try not to take such personal offense to what you find incorrect.
Look, I agreed with the the gist of his speculation, fully and completely acknowledging that it is just speculation and theory. I’m not even arguing that it was the wrong choice, just that there was a genuine political stigma against Hummer and that stigma played a role in making it appear less viable than it may have actually been compared to the other axed brands.
I’m not even saying the guvmint (which thank you for that btw, you have my permission to call me a retard if you wish to save beating around the bush) had any say in that at all. I could speculate that GM execs saw Hummer as an elephant in the room for a Democratic majority to approve a measure as significant as a bailout so put it under review just to sweeten the deal.
Also at the risk of fanning flames on this pointless argument, pushback on the hypothetical scenario of Hummer being successful and still needing the bailout(in which case other profitable trucks and SUVs are likely selling too, so why need the bailout???) really doesn’t seem to be that much of a concern since there was huge public outcry from the bailouts happening in general.
Yes, let’s stick to cars. You want to tell MoparRocker and Matt that for me?
You could just tell me yourself Paul, you didn’t say that line once in one of your attitude filled retorts prior, only the demand to bring proof or stfu(because we’ve never had published articles or discussions with speculation in here before). No, you just called me a right wing rube nutjob because I agreed with one line of speculation from someone else’s post.
My God There was a whole article you wrote full of speculation and theory on cars influenced by the Corvair, It’s one of my favorite columns I’ve read here, but there’s no one demanding documented proof verifying each and every one of them cribbed it, every car you found it’s glaringly obvious. This I found no different, It’s an obvious conclusion to jump to, and since intercorporate decisions and politics are rarely transparent enough to get definitive accounts of decisions presented to us, a certain amount of holes are going to be there for people to try and fill, I just agreed with part of MoparRocker’s take, not even the whole thing, and pointed out some of the GM decisions that came to bite them in the ass to help support the notion. I do realize now this delved into politics, and that genuinely wasn’t my intent as I dislike discussing politics as well, which I apologize for, but the Hummer brand’s demise is as impossible to discuss without mentioning it as it is to discuss the Beetle’s origins without mentioning Adolf Hitler.
Anyway I said my peace and will follow LTD’s advice and keep it to cars.
Don’t worry MoparRocker, Paul is always right in his own mind. But your opinion is always your opinion, and as valid as anyone else’s. He loves his toaster, and while it’s not my glass of Scotch, if he likes it, who am I to argue? If you love your car, you’re OK in my book, and never mind whether or not it’ll grace my driveway.
Your “educated speculation” is uneducated; just pure speculation. GM was losing a shit load of money on Hummer, due to the huge start-up costs.The decision to put Hummer “in review” (meaning sell or kill) was made in June 2008, one year before GM’s bankruptcy. Politics had nothing to do with it; Hummer was bleeding massive red ink, and was utterly doomed.
Please don’t try to re-write history in light of your politics. It’s an all-too common problem these days.
Id like to know how GM was losing money on them. Large SUVs are tremendously profitable. Especially when one product is a barely federalized version of a vehicle the military is buying by the thousands, and the other 2 are heavily based on existing products.
The price of oil spiking would definitely take a toll on the viability of the H1/2 and the economy crash as well. But the H3 and the almost HX would absolutely be viable right now. Take a look at Jeep. It and RAM are the most profitable divisions in all of FCA right now and both have been winners for some time. If Hummer had survived to spawn a butched up CUV or 2 in the vein of the what Jeep has, theyd be selling like hotcakes too.
Whats NOT viable is having 2 truck divisions that are virtual clones of one another and a division whose entire demographic is retirement age.
Like it or not, dirty politics are smeared all over the bailout fiasco, both with GM and Chrysler. As Ive said often, politics in business should be as little as possible as much as is absolutely needed to get by.
Id like to know how GM was losing money on them.
Ask GM; they’re the ones that were saying so.
The car business is not quite as simple as you might think.
First of all GM was not making the military version of the H1, so that was not helping. But the whole idea that 2 truck divisions that are virtual clones of each other not being viable is silly. GM’s 5 car divisions are virtual clones of each other from sometime around the mid 1920’s I think. I think that the concept behind GM was to integrate the lineup into using as many uniform parts as possible. Durant saw Leland as key to making this work and thus Cadillac was a key component of the lineup.
I never understood why they killed Pontiac but kept GMC. Pontiac had differentiated themselves quite nicely by the end. G6, GTO, Solstice, etc. Heck, even the Aztek. Yeah, I know they weren’t great cars but they were differentiated from the rest of GM and I for one liked the sporty image they portrayed even when they didn’t live up to that image.
Like Paul says though it’s a complicated market and I don’t fully understand it, but I still like to speculate.
GMC was a truck that the other divisions could sell, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick. Cadillac did not usually sell other cars, but may have been paired with one in rural areas. Now GMC is probably sold by a Buick dealer. GMC does offer a few high end models that Chevrolet trucks don’t.
The Pontiac division would have to have been profitable to remain. Buick remains mainly because the market in China is too good. GM proabably only needs Chevrolet and Cadillac, and Cadillac may be iffy.
Agree with you on GMC. In the old days, of course, GMC produced buses, coaches and class 8 trucks so it made sense. But the biggest truck these days has a payload of 7200 lbs which is nothing; this can be quite easily be covered by Chevrolet.
The H2 was a fad that had passed long before the bailout. Everyone who wanted one and could swing its’ luxury pricetag and sky-high TCO (yes, even before gas jumped – ever priced tires that big?) bought in the first two model years.
Funny thing is, those wheels actually look small by today’s standards, and the tire circumference about normal. In the past few decades we have transitioned from ridiculously small wheels to ridiculously large wheels that hurt performance and economy with their unsprung weight while requiring expensive tires.
The CC Effect in effect — an H2 spotted in a grocery store parking lot today, the first in a long time. I have to say that in a relatively restrained color such as this one, these are not as obnoxious looking, although still overstyled and too stubby to be really useful as a people and cargo hauler.
I should add that the H2 appears to have been a minor export hit among people with an in-your-face “look at me!” attitude. I have seen significant numbers of them in Dubai, of course, and even a few in Sweden. I saw several in Iraq, all of them bright yellow, probably secondhand imports from Dubai. These export sales do not mean that the H2 is good, only that the taste (or lack thereof) that led to their early sales in the U.S. exists overseas as well.
I noticed the GM station wagon in your picture.
I don’t care for the H2, but actually I think it is one of the rare times where GM actually read the market half well. People wanted big SUVs, and they found a way to semi-inexpensively build an H1 that average people could drive. If they had figured out to do this sooner, they would have made even more money than they did on it. Problem was they thought of it after the peak of the SUV craze, they were a few years too late. And then the financial crisis hit, and people weren’t buying 50+k cars with home equity anymore. I normally criticize GM for not reading its market well enough, and so always producing me-too products or cars that are only about 80% right. I feel like with the H2 they actually got it right, a niche specialty vehicle capitalizing on a crazy big SUV craze. They were just too late. Just as well, they would have tried to milk it too long if they hadn’t gone bankrupt. GM doesn’t know how to retire an idea and move on to the next one.
Hummers arent really big lets face it theres a normal pickup underneath it and even the military Humvee is only truck width, 2.5 M is the international max width allowed on public roads. Theres one of the long turd versions here along with a stretchy Lincoln making up a limo fleet at a local hotel, not much use in traffic both of them tend to block the road some.
Hummers seemed to attract buyers who were “all hat & no cattle” , to borrow a phrase that was popular at the time. Once GM bought Hummer from A.M. General , you just knew it was only a matter of time & they would botch it up. Was it Jeep Envy or just old fashion GM Bravado? Our local Hummer dealership is now selling Fiat.
GM Bravado…didn’t they actually market something called a Bravado? 😉
They had the Oldsmobile Bravada. That’s pretty close…
Nice article, but i think you sort of missed the point why H2 was so polarizing and hence why it collapsed onto itself. It wasn’t that it was too big or too wide. It was about as excessive as the GM cars before the downsizing in 1977. Perhaps moreso.
here’s some examples of this:
* It was roughly the same size and slightly wider than a gen1 Expedition, yet because of its boxy design it looked much bigger in person. 34-35″ factory tires also don’t help much. In its proportion the car looks as if built around the 35″ tire. Sort of similar how Cadillac in the 1960s constantly kept adding length to its Deville to make it seem more stately. But the H2 cannot be stately, only more massive.
* However the interior was not nearly as big as the exterior. Thick plastic trim wastes space and essentially makes it no bigger than a Jeep ZJ on the inside. Thus it couldn’t even satisfy its percieved core demographic – the big&tall people, an old Tahoe actually has much more room on all seats. And more seat travel in the front.
* Because of the lousy aerodynamics, inadequate 6.0 and the stupid Full-time 4WD with constant 40:60 split, the fuel economy was just insane. Average fuel economy the car journalists this side of the Atlantic recorded was about 8 mpg. Which means an average user could (and would) actually do worse. Even the much bigger and heavier 4WD Excursion with the 6.8 V10 could average 10-11 in morning commute in the city. In fact the best way to increase gas mileage of your H2 is to slap a supercharger on it.
* you can’t tow much with it or in it (main culprit being not the engine but the transmission. It was initially actually fitted with a strengthened 4L60E instead of the 4L80E or 4L85E of the TH400 fame). It is useless as a station wagon, you can barely fit its own tires into it. Despite the advertised horsepower it is not that fast or quick. And despite the truck underpinnings not nearly as reliable. Sure the parts are beefy, but the looks and feel of it are like a gigantic indestructible toy… and the only thing it really is not is indestructible.
Yep I agree on all counts. It wasn’t that it was too large, it’s that it was completely impractical compared to other options, some of which were larger. The only thing it had was going for it was looks. And I do actually kind of like the looks. But it never came close to living up to them.
exactly–the look and Hummer name were writing checks this glorified Tahoe couldn’t cash.
My least favorite car ever. Such cynical thinking creating such a vulgar product.
I have to state that the comments about the interior are completely off base. The H2’s interior was never anything like the Tahoe or Yukon. They aren’t even close.
My family bought me two Hummer cologne gift sets for Father’s Day.
I’ve stocked up on it in the past when I’ve found it on sale or heavily discounted… I keep waiting for the brand to be discontinued. These two new additions to my collection should give me common scents until the early 2100’s… 🙂
Happy Father’s Day everyone. Let’s think of our dads and the cars of our childhood on this day.
This brings back a memory of many years ago: I was in the parking lot of a restaurant in CT when I spotted a Hummer. H1 I think. I glanced inside of this monster and marveled at the huge size of the console with 4 little bucket seats, one with a baby seat in it, when this little young lady came out with her baby and proceeded to jockey this beast out of the parking lot. Amazing what people want to drive!
Fast forward 6 years, Priuses have been hit with the ugly stick and no one wants them, electric cars are all the rage amongst treehuggers, and full size SUV’s are selling for above sticker. GM should have ignored all the haters in this comment section and never stopped pumping these out, along with a line of macho crossovers to compete with the Jeep lineup. Now all we have is an overweight overpriced electric monstrosity that isn’t even here yet, and a Chevy Blazer crossover.
So GM blew it and lost millions on another one of their brands.
I would expect nothing less from them.
I got the use of an H2 for a whole week back when they were new and cool. Of course the gas mileage was atrocious – I remember spending well over $100 for a full tank of gas and I had to fill it up twice that week with my commute. But the worst was when I carted my 8 year old (at the time) to soccer practice in the H2 and as we pulled into the parking lot full of other kids and parents my son rolled down the window, leaned out and shouted “hey everyone, look at my Dad’s new car!”
Not just America !!
I saw a black Hummer crawling through the “Amerika-mura” district of Osaka in 2016. It was too big…