Name: What Happened To The Hummer?
Uploaded: 2021-06-07T14:48:14.000Z
Duration: 12 min 27 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In the early 1990s, one of Hollywood's biggest action stars pestered a

U.S. defense contractor to sell him a truck the American military had

The angular, militaristic go anywhere truck became an emblem of 1990s pop

culture, a coveted status symbol sought by celebrities and a sometimes

mocked and vilified example of just how far America's newfound love for

The Hummer was huge, brash and often brightly colored, and it became a

favorite choice for adventurous buyers who didn't mind attracting

As parent company General Motors collapsed into bankruptcy.

I would say there probably isn't many more iconic vehicles of this century

than the Hummer. I would put like the Hummer, the Prius, the Beatle.

I would say they all existed for a time and were so incredibly popular and

their popularity has faded for all of them.

But I mean, Hummer was so ubiquitous at one point in terms of representing

that overly emasculated, aggressive, almost stereotype.

The Hummer had a brief life spanning just under two decades, but it made a

The vehicle that would come to be called a Hummer actually began as the

U.S. military's High Mobility Multi-purposed Wheeled Vehicle.

The name's cumbersome acronym H M M W V landed the truck with its nickname

Humvee. It was first developed in 1981 by U.S.

It was most notably used in the first Gulf War, but the kind seen on roads

and highways later on came about because as the story goes, Arnold

Schwarzenegger saw a convoy of Hummers in Oregon while filming a movie and

Upon seeing them, he would later say he could see himself driving the

vehicle in the mountains and in the desert.

Schwarzenegger reportedly lobbied AM general repeatedly for one of the

vehicles. At first, he demanded one of the same Humvees the company had

sold to the military, but he was refused since the truck was not street

legal. Then he began asking AM general to make a civilian version.

He even flew out to the company's headquarters in South Bend, Indiana, to

make his case. The contractor eventually created a civilian version in

Schwarzenegger was there for the unveiling of the vehicle and drove one of

the first specimens off the assembly line.

By many measurements, the Hummer outdid every other passenger vehicle on

the market. It had a full 16 inches of ground clearance.

That's over nine inches more than the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon.

It was also seven feet wide, almost as wide as the biggest street legal

semitrucks, making it stable and resistant to rollover, despite its

height. The civilian version came with a more comfortable cabin geared for

cruising and commuting rather than combat.

But the truck did retain some of the features found in the original

version. There's a vehicle that was extremely capable of going anywhere

off road. So even if most owners never actually took it off the pavement,

the vehicle did have the credibility behind it.

Owners of the vehicle knew that it could go really far off road if they so

desired. And the capability of that vehicle was part of its credibility.

And the Hummer was a success for a while.

Gm bought the brand in 1999 and expanded the lineup with progressively

By 2002, General Motors was launching the Hummer brand in a big way with

the H2, which was a smaller version of the smaller, more consumer

friendly version of the H1 that was heavily based on GM pickup.

And the timing of it was sort of fortuitous for General Motors because the

second Gulf War was starting and all over the news, all you saw were

And right about that time, General Motors launched the H2.

So it was able to capitalize on it was able to capitalize on current

events at the time. It also made it a very polarizing vehicle because

Americans were either in support of the war or they were really, really

against it. Eventually, every celebrity seemed to have one.

Schwarzenegger himself owned at least seven at one point.

At its peak in 2006, Americans bought more than 71,000 Hummers.

The vehicle was an oddity in the marketplace, huge, blunt and aggressive.

But that appears to be part of what people liked about it.

It was a vehicle that absolutely could not be ignored.

I think the fact that there were so many of them that were painted bright

yellow sort of spoke volumes about the fact that this is the view that

I mean, people generally chose pretty extroverted colors to go with this

vehicle. You know, the vehicle was, of course, extremely often capable,

but there were a relatively small number of people who actually use it for

that purpose. Really, it was a fashion statement.

For some people was even a political statement.

And most of all, it was a vehicle that vote for those who were really into

the product. It was something that they really wanted to show off and be

seen in. However, there was also backlash against the truck, which critics

The original Hummer H1 got about 10 miles per gallon, the smallest of the

lineup, the H3 got 14 miles per gallon with an automatic transmission in

To activists and other critics, the vehicle became a symbol of excess and

the American addiction to fuel at a time when prices were beginning to

climb and the country was fighting wars in the oil rich Middle East.

In one high profile case, a dealership in West Covina, California, was

vandalized, including 20 Hummers valued at about $50000 each.

The perpetrators spray painted messages on several of the damaged trucks,

including gross polluter and fat, lazy Americans.

Rising fuel prices and a grueling recession spoiled America's taste for

big vehicles. Hummer sales fell from their 2006 high to 55,986 in