TigerH3
02-19-2006, 02:11 AM
"MOTOR REVIEW
'Baby Hummer' is still a big block of truck
Visibility, control buttons are issues in latest version
The big question you might well ask, after spending some time with the new iteration of America's only armored personnel carrier for the street is, why? Why are we making this car? Why are we selling it? Why doesn't it just quietly go away?
The answer, like most things in the complicated, highly competitive world of the auto industry, is not as simple as it might seem. True, the Hummer has been hated like no other -- viciously swiped at as the Darth Vader of all the hated sport utility vehicles. On the other hand, it is the kind of rig that gets some people's blood moving, gets them wondering, gee, maybe I could have one of these battle tanks instead of the same old Toyota, the same old Honda.
The new Hummer H3, the so-called "baby Hummer," is the third go-around (viz. the H1 and the H2) on an SUV that started life more than 20 years ago as the humvee, a "High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle" made for the Army by AM General. It is a chunky, wide $35,000 block of a truck, with sharp, no-nonsense planes, a vehicle designed to ford shallow rivers, leap over deserts and plow through forests.
Moreover, perhaps because the Hummer is so aggressive looking and earned a reputation as a vehicle whose sole purpose is to carry soldiers and marines into battle -- think of all those TV images from the 1991 Gulf war, not to mention what is going on in Iraq today -- it conjures up feelings that have nothing to do with neutrality.
In this country, the commercial Hummer became a lightning rod for all the complaints of that amalgam of environmentalists and anti-war and anti-big-oil factions. Hummers were spat upon, egged upon and sometimes torched. Driving one around town is an invitation for the odd sullen stare, the look that says, "that car stands for everything I hate." In Berkeley the other day , a woman pedaled by on her bicycle, looked over at the silver Hummer H3 parked on a residential street and shouted: "Bad gas mileage! Bad for the environment!"
So.... a bit of a time out. Is the H3 all that bad? Start with its size. It's nearly five inches shorter than a politically correct Honda Accord sedan and only three inches wider (it just looks much wider); but it is about a foot and half taller. In the price field of its SUV competition, it fits fine size-wise -- the Toyota 4Runner is three inches longer, an inch wider and five inches shorter.
The Hummer may fit in the same playpen as the other SUVs, but that's where the similarities end. Push the remote door unlocking part of the key fob, climb the two steps up into the cab and sit back in the fairly plush, cloth-covered seats and you immediately get the unerring sense of what this truck is all about. (And it is a truck, by the way -- it's built on the platform of GM's Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickup trucks and uses their 3.5-liter five-cylinder in-line engines.)
It's a bit like crawling into a cave. It's darker, or at least it feels darker. The windshield is quite forward from the driver's seat and for that reason adjusting the rearview mirror is, for some people, a stretch. But the main glitch stems from the original design of the HUMVEE -- it's the windows. They are high up and narrow, shallow. They're like slits.
And it's the windows that really cause the H3's biggest problems -- because they're so high, and because there is so much sheet metal surrounding you, it's impossible to see a lot of what you might back into. This is not a truck for people who live with small children, or have small children in their neighborhoods.
"The car feels like it has blind spots," said Wayne Billheimer, 34, who was carpooling into San Francisco from Berkeley recently in the H3. "The tiny windows -- it seems like you're going to be shot at. I like the upholstery. I keep wondering if it's Kevlar." Asked whether he could feel the car's military heritage, he looked around the interior and said, "It's the Hummer thing. Look at the sunroof. You half expect you could mount a .50-caliber machine gun on it."
Driving the H3 is an exercise in being careful (again, the windows). It has big left- and right outside mirrors (they partly compensate for the slit-like view from the inside mirror back through the tailgate window), but changing freeway lanes can sometimes be a problem if you hesitate. You have to get that bulk moving and hope some little Sentra or Z3 doesn't nip into your space while the 220-horsepower engine is laboring to get 4,700 pounds of Hummer H3 from over from one lane to another.
The steering wheel is thick, for no apparent reason, but it seems natural, given the thick atmosphere of nearly every other aspect of the H3 -- the pillars holding up the roof, for example -- and there are ergonomic twitches that make you wonder about GM's design staff (unlike the H1 and H2, still built by AM General, the H3 is built by GM).
Take the power window buttons. (Pleeeaaassse. TAKE the power window buttons.) In most cars, they fall readily to hand, at the front end of the driver's armrest. In the H3, they're about a foot south and you have to crook up your left arm, reach back and fumble for the correct button.
Or the electronic cruise control. Many manufacturers have managed to get the controls for this frequently used accessory onto the steering wheel. Not GM's H3. It's an awkward arrangement at the end of the turn signal stalk, requiring digital dexterity on a tiny "accelerate" button embedded in the stalk.
So why buy this car? There are plenty of other SUVs out there -- Edmunds.com lists 43 of them in the $25,000 to $35,000 price range -- and most of them will handle better, have fewer blind spots, get better gas mileage and will go faster. Then go back to the Hummer H3 and see if its own particular style appeals. If you want something that looks like a cross between a Brinks armored car and a chopped Jeep Cherokee, well, have we got a truck for you."
Link (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/18/GG4H8VQG1.DTL)
'Baby Hummer' is still a big block of truck
Visibility, control buttons are issues in latest version
The big question you might well ask, after spending some time with the new iteration of America's only armored personnel carrier for the street is, why? Why are we making this car? Why are we selling it? Why doesn't it just quietly go away?
The answer, like most things in the complicated, highly competitive world of the auto industry, is not as simple as it might seem. True, the Hummer has been hated like no other -- viciously swiped at as the Darth Vader of all the hated sport utility vehicles. On the other hand, it is the kind of rig that gets some people's blood moving, gets them wondering, gee, maybe I could have one of these battle tanks instead of the same old Toyota, the same old Honda.
The new Hummer H3, the so-called "baby Hummer," is the third go-around (viz. the H1 and the H2) on an SUV that started life more than 20 years ago as the humvee, a "High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle" made for the Army by AM General. It is a chunky, wide $35,000 block of a truck, with sharp, no-nonsense planes, a vehicle designed to ford shallow rivers, leap over deserts and plow through forests.
Moreover, perhaps because the Hummer is so aggressive looking and earned a reputation as a vehicle whose sole purpose is to carry soldiers and marines into battle -- think of all those TV images from the 1991 Gulf war, not to mention what is going on in Iraq today -- it conjures up feelings that have nothing to do with neutrality.
In this country, the commercial Hummer became a lightning rod for all the complaints of that amalgam of environmentalists and anti-war and anti-big-oil factions. Hummers were spat upon, egged upon and sometimes torched. Driving one around town is an invitation for the odd sullen stare, the look that says, "that car stands for everything I hate." In Berkeley the other day , a woman pedaled by on her bicycle, looked over at the silver Hummer H3 parked on a residential street and shouted: "Bad gas mileage! Bad for the environment!"
So.... a bit of a time out. Is the H3 all that bad? Start with its size. It's nearly five inches shorter than a politically correct Honda Accord sedan and only three inches wider (it just looks much wider); but it is about a foot and half taller. In the price field of its SUV competition, it fits fine size-wise -- the Toyota 4Runner is three inches longer, an inch wider and five inches shorter.
The Hummer may fit in the same playpen as the other SUVs, but that's where the similarities end. Push the remote door unlocking part of the key fob, climb the two steps up into the cab and sit back in the fairly plush, cloth-covered seats and you immediately get the unerring sense of what this truck is all about. (And it is a truck, by the way -- it's built on the platform of GM's Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickup trucks and uses their 3.5-liter five-cylinder in-line engines.)
It's a bit like crawling into a cave. It's darker, or at least it feels darker. The windshield is quite forward from the driver's seat and for that reason adjusting the rearview mirror is, for some people, a stretch. But the main glitch stems from the original design of the HUMVEE -- it's the windows. They are high up and narrow, shallow. They're like slits.
And it's the windows that really cause the H3's biggest problems -- because they're so high, and because there is so much sheet metal surrounding you, it's impossible to see a lot of what you might back into. This is not a truck for people who live with small children, or have small children in their neighborhoods.
"The car feels like it has blind spots," said Wayne Billheimer, 34, who was carpooling into San Francisco from Berkeley recently in the H3. "The tiny windows -- it seems like you're going to be shot at. I like the upholstery. I keep wondering if it's Kevlar." Asked whether he could feel the car's military heritage, he looked around the interior and said, "It's the Hummer thing. Look at the sunroof. You half expect you could mount a .50-caliber machine gun on it."
Driving the H3 is an exercise in being careful (again, the windows). It has big left- and right outside mirrors (they partly compensate for the slit-like view from the inside mirror back through the tailgate window), but changing freeway lanes can sometimes be a problem if you hesitate. You have to get that bulk moving and hope some little Sentra or Z3 doesn't nip into your space while the 220-horsepower engine is laboring to get 4,700 pounds of Hummer H3 from over from one lane to another.
The steering wheel is thick, for no apparent reason, but it seems natural, given the thick atmosphere of nearly every other aspect of the H3 -- the pillars holding up the roof, for example -- and there are ergonomic twitches that make you wonder about GM's design staff (unlike the H1 and H2, still built by AM General, the H3 is built by GM).
Take the power window buttons. (Pleeeaaassse. TAKE the power window buttons.) In most cars, they fall readily to hand, at the front end of the driver's armrest. In the H3, they're about a foot south and you have to crook up your left arm, reach back and fumble for the correct button.
Or the electronic cruise control. Many manufacturers have managed to get the controls for this frequently used accessory onto the steering wheel. Not GM's H3. It's an awkward arrangement at the end of the turn signal stalk, requiring digital dexterity on a tiny "accelerate" button embedded in the stalk.
So why buy this car? There are plenty of other SUVs out there -- Edmunds.com lists 43 of them in the $25,000 to $35,000 price range -- and most of them will handle better, have fewer blind spots, get better gas mileage and will go faster. Then go back to the Hummer H3 and see if its own particular style appeals. If you want something that looks like a cross between a Brinks armored car and a chopped Jeep Cherokee, well, have we got a truck for you."
Link (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/18/GG4H8VQG1.DTL)