Apologies if this has already been discussed.
General Motors Co. is considering expressions of interest from several potential buyers for its Hummer brand after the planned sale to a Chinese company collapsed, five people briefed on the discussions said.
tinyurl.com/ylptny9
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Whilst I admit to driving 4WD cars, the Hummers were the most ridiculous cars on the road save stretch limos.
Huge vehicles on the outside, but tiny inside, built using poor quality materials, dreadful to drive and usually driven by obnoxious people who have inflated egos.
So I for one am delighted that the beasts will no longer be built. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
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>> Whilst I admit to driving 4WD cars the Hummers were the most ridiculous cars on
>> the road save stretch limos.
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I saw a stretched Hummer in Edinburgh a few days ago, It looked resonably new and totaly stupid. Who uses these things? (or any stretch car)
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Our roads will be a safer place without them. I can put up with the dangers of buses and lorries as they are essential but Hummers are just wrong on so many levels. I can even put up with Land Rovers etc because they are very nice cars and they are researching heavily to make them more efficient.
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Hummer was always a silly brand. The military vehicle was one thing, to introduce something related for the roads was pointless (H1). And then to dumb down the point of a Hummer totally (H2 and H3).
Last edited by: welshy on Thu 25 Feb 10 at 22:13
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I agree with the Ancient Mariner....totally stupid. But wait ! We have a PINK stretch Humper plying it's foul trade around here !
Ted
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>> We have a PINK stretch Humper
We got lotsa them.
Can you imagine the quality of the conversation inside these things? I can't. My mind just boggles when I try.
And I agree with the Taff: a proper plug-ugly dull khaki Humvee would be fine, if only it was narrow enough to fit on ordinary roads. These shiny low-rent civilian ones are crap.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Fri 26 Feb 10 at 00:33
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I quite fancy one of the US military's replacements for the Humvee. tinyurl.com/y9blhbx
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I always fancied the Lamborghini 4WD.Makes a Hummer look positively like a kiddie car.
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Including the machine gun I assume ;-)
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>> Including the machine gun I assume ;-)
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Definitely, or even definately!
;-)
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Good riddance. The original Hummers were great military vehicles for those like invading third-world-countries and shooting up the natives ... but taking a Hummer into a city was as daft as using a Ferrari to carry soldiers across a battlefield.
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Thanks to the great god of corporate entertainment, I once found myself behind the wheel of a Hummer. It was the H1, the glacier melting, baby seal clubbing, road going version of the US Army HMMWV, star of “Desert Storm”.
An H1 up close is big and has that mean look of military machinery despite the regrettable lack of a machine gun. Up close, the rivets securing the aircraft grade aluminium to the chassis were obvious to see and fit and finish clearly had to be related to the intended purpose rather than the quoted $130.000 price tag for the road going version.
Into the cabin and, after tripping over the incredibly high and wide sill, there was a comfortable drivers’ seat with about a mile distance from the passenger seat. The steering wheel was a 3 spoke job, surprisingly small and looking like it came from a mid 70s Porsche 911 and just like in that vehicle, one’s knuckles are only about an inch from an array of archaic looking dials. Interior trim is restricted to plastic bits to cover the roughest edges of the metal bits and air conditioning, which is also not standard in the military version. Behind the steering wheel were a couple of puny looking stalks to operate indicators and wipers. The interior of one of these monsters offers cramped accomodation for 4 with a large luggage area for the luggage, or, for the more likely purchaser, the 10,000W gold plated subwoofer.
The ignition key is weedy and looks like it came from a Chevrolet Impala. The glow plugs take half an eternity to warm up and firing up the 6.6 litre V12 Turbodiesel feels like you've just unleashed the seven hounds of hell. Wow, it’s loud.
On the road it was totally out of its depth, was more or less flat out at 50mph and had drivetrain whine to rival a Mini. Actually the volume of noise was equivalent to about 100 Minis. Giving it full throttle from a standing start, the engine racket was deafening and together with the gear whine and wind noise led me to wonder why GM had bothered to fit the thing with a CD player. Even on American roads the width and vague steering made it daunting to drive, but fortunately other road users make a lot of space when they see one of these things bearing down on them. Pedestrians stopped and stared, but noone actually saluted.
Offroad in low range mode it was completely unstoppable. We demolished a large area of the Pennsylvania countryside in this thing, driving up implausibly steep hills and forging surprisingly deep ponds. A very enjoyable day in fact, belonging to what the Americans refer to as "Outdoor Sports".
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I remember seeing the original H1 road-version of the military machine on Portland Place near the Langham Hilton. It was back in about '97 so was probably one of, if not the first of these monsters to be shipped over and I guess it would have been Frank Warren behind the wheel. He bought one when he saw that Arnie was driving one. Didn't do him any good as I recall, someone shot him in the chest with a Luger - the correct colloquial term would probably be "popped a cap in his backside".
I saw one last year at a car road show and had a shufty inside. What an absolute monster. You could play ping pong between the driver and the passenger.
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Hummer brand to disappear? - Netsur
