Take the stubby overhangs and exposed wheels which look great but also allow the Hummer to clamber up insane inclines without scraping the bumpers to bits, as happens in most other SUVs. Indeed, it’s only when you take it into the rough stuff that the look and the engineering of the H3 starts to make sense.
Body roll is well suppressed thanks to its broad shape and low centre of gravity and the buttery ride in US models is wonderful – even across rutted, rocky terrain the H3 remains calm and relaxing. There’s some weight and feel through the wheel (those big knobbly rob it of any superfluous intimacy) and it’s got an acceptably quick rack, too, even if it’s not quite as sharp as a Nissan Pathfinder or Jeep Grand Cherokee. It also doesn’t handle as badly as I had anticipated either, with little of the wallow and sogginess found in other American GM off-roaders. That said, the 17 mpg average we achieved in the automatic model wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.
Though the H3 is meant to be the economical model, it’s still no fuel sipper, especially as you have to thrash it to get it to move.
#Hummer h3 reviews manual#
We didn’t get to drive the manual gearbox model but our sources tell us the shift has a long throw and a reasonably accurate gate, while the extra cog helps acceleration slightly and improves economy also. The automatic shifts reasonably smoothly and is responsive to throttle inputs but with only four gears, no manual override and a pathetic power to-weight ratio, there’s only so much you can expect from it. There are plans for a diesel model for Europe and my expectation is that it should be a lot better than this commercial five banger. It’ll cruise along well enough but mash the throttle and the Hummer gathers speed at the same rate oak trees grow while making a nasty, trashy sound all the way. The 3.5-litre, all-aluminium,20-valve engine produces a modest 220 bhp and 305 NM of torque, which, in a 2132 kg vehicle, simply isn’t enough. Everyone is shocked to hear it’s ‘only’$28,500 (though most haven’t factored in the optional $1,700 automatic) and few are concerned by the fact it hasn’t got a V8 or even a V6.They’re fine with its inline 5-cylinder engine because it doesn’t have the poverty stigma of ‘four cylinder’ power but I still advised them to drive the H3 before they buy because it’s nothing as powerful as it looks. Even in America where people now tut-tut at the bigger Hummers, the H3 garnishes a lot of attention and never fails to draw a curious crowd. It’s not as menacing as its siblings either, looking more like a cuddly little lion cub than its fullblown, bone-munching parents. It’ll easily fit down most of Europe’s narrow roads and into those pesky ‘compact ‘parking spots. It just looks big because we associate those blocky styling features with size and excess but in reality it’s quite small. For a start, the Hummer H3 isn’t massive. But should you be cowering in fear at the prospect of ‘Hum-Vs’ roaming around Europe’s city streets? The H3 isn’t going to sell in significant numbers but it will act as an introduction for the other GM products that are planned. GM plans to pedal all its US products across the globe presumably because it figures that’s the best way to compete with Toyota, which is fast filling up its rear-view mirror in the race for the World’s Biggest Carmaker title.
Why should you care? Well, the Hummer’s a-Comin ‘to Europe and was designed to do so from day one. In classic GM fashion, they simply re-bodied another vehicle (this time the unremarkable Trail Blazer) and gave us the baby H3. When petrol prices began to skyrocket people simply stopped buying the beastly beasts, but Hummer wasn’t about to roll over and die. Hummer’s first commercial product, the H2,was a blatant attempt to cash in on the military cool of the original, built on a modified version of an existing GM SUV platform and engineered without much finesse - it weighs a whopping 2909kg and its 6.0litre V8 is barely able to get double-digit fuel economy figures. It originally was endorsed and popularised by celebrities and embraced by those with little regard for the natural environment or other road users. The gargantuan H1 was originally designed as a military vehicle and is still being blown asunder every day in Iraq - one of the countries it relies on to feed its unquenchable thirst for fuel, ironically. Hummers embody the very essence of American culture.
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