General Motors couldn’t possibly have chosen a more appropriate setting for the debut of the 2003 Hummer H2 sport/utility vehicle than the Vanderbilt Biltmore estate in Asheville, N.C. The place is magnificent, of course; at 250-plus rooms, it’s the largest private residence in America. (What home, I wonder, is bigger in the Western Hemisphere?) But Biltmore is singularly unlivable as a modern residence, much as the original $110,000 Hummer SUV, now dubbed H1, is positively undrivable as a realistic civilian vehicle. To save Biltmore from becoming an insupportable white elephant, the Cecil family—heirs to this part of the Vanderbilt fortune—elected to build The Inn on Biltmore Estate, with 213 far more intimate rooms available to paying customers. Likewise, to save the Hummer brand name from degenerating into a ridiculous consumer joke, GM elected to built the Hummer H2, with far more concessions to real-world driving comfort and affordability.
Both the Inn and the H2 represent ingenious marketing exercises. With a touch of stonework and plenty of stucco, the Inn looks enough like Biltmore mansion to camouflage the modern commercial hotel operating within. As for the H2, it’s essentially a Nieman-Marcus-edition sport/utility vehicle: In 1999, GM bought the rights to “Hummer”—just the word, mind you, not the Indiana manufacturer AM General, which continues to make the H1. GM then promptly raided the parts bins for its myriad Chevrolet and GMC pickups and SUVs; sketched out a sort of Tonka Toy, GI Joe-compatible body style; and, a fleet 16 months later, debuted the H2 in June. Behold the apotheosis of “branding.” The only thing the H2 shares with the original military HumVee from Desert Storm is the “Hum-” in its name. Oh, that and the two brawny tow hooks hanging off the rear bumper.
GM officials are more than willing to ’fess right up to their cheeky ploy. “The H2,” boasts Hummer Division marketing manager Paul Beckett, “is the world’s second-best sport/utility vehicle. Only the H1 surpasses it.” As luck would have it, I drove a $112,000 H1 four-passenger wagon for a week just prior to my test-drive in the H2 in Asheville. I’ve got news for Mr. Beckett: The H2 is so far better than its namesake in every real-world consideration that it’s hardly valid to compare the two.
The H2 starts at $48,065, seats up to six and regales occupants in the sort of ride comfort and amenities selection that render GM trucks among the most user-friendly on the road. By contrast, the base price of the H1 wagon I drove was two-and-a-quarter times as expensive; four passengers must sit in individual telephone booths that are literally out of arms’ reach from one another; and ride quality is the automotive equivalent of a whip and flail. In short, the H2 is a vehicle you can realistically live with. No wonder the chief fans of the H1 are 14-year-old boys and overpaid Hollywood action heroes—folks, in other words, without much inkling about what’s really needed to get around in this world.
Them’s fightin’ words, of course; at which point H1 partisans are quick to pull out wallet photos of their rock-climbing exploits in Moab, Utah, or along the Rubicon Trail west of Lake Tahoe. Fine. See you there sometime, and maybe you can give me some pointers. Meanwhile, for the remaining 364 days of the year, the H2 is more than capable for whatever 99 percent of off-road loonies can throw at it. At the Biltmore Estate, I drove an H2 through 20-inch deep streams; waddled over “turtles” that alternated between two-foot holes and two-foot mounds under opposite sides of the wheeltrack; breasted an embankment tilted over 20-degrees to the side; and tiptoed over eight-to-10-inch fallen logs and a rock pile of strewn boulders. All that before duking it out with soccer moms over a parking space at the village shopping center.
Number-nerds can marvel at the specs: the H2’s approach angle is 40.4 degrees, and departure angle is 39.6 degrees (41.7 and 40, respectively, with optional self-leveling air suspension). Ground clearance is 10.5 inches (9.9 inches at the differential). Horsepower from the six-liter Vortec V8 is 316 hp, with 360 ft.- lbs of torque that can be stepped down to a remarkable 33-to-1 crawl ratio in 4WD-Low-Locked range.
The H2 employs a sophisticated Borg-Warner transfer case to route drive-power to all four wheels all the time; and there are locking differentials at center and rear. For normal road conditions, power is split 40/60 between front and rear wheels. In the most extreme off-road circumstances, a single-wheel traction-control system allows the H2 to pull or push itself along by means of one wheel only if all others are slipping.
By far the most agreeable feature of the H2 interior, in comparison with the H1, is conversation. Yes, it’s actually possible not only to speak and to listen in hushed, civil tones but also to enjoy radio and CD audio from a booming Bose system. The driver’s seat is a command-and-control center befitting all the H2’s off-road capabilities, but passengers aren’t banished to their own separate cubicles; they’re pampered with cushy seats and pile carpeting. Only a paratroop-style single jump-seat in the third row seems a bit skimpy. If you need room for six, it’s handy enough. Otherwise, you’ll want the space for cargo, since the massive spare tire consumes almost all the remaining storage room. I predict that diehard off-roaders will banish the spare to the roof in order to exploit the total 87 cubic feet of cargo space that is otherwise available.
Make no mistake, the Hummer H2 is still an expensive SUV toy; its six-liter V8 is irresponsibly thirsty; and the pseudo-macho styling is a Village People version of an army truck. But there’s almost nowhere the H2 can’t go—comfortably, at that. For folks who’ve just got to get away from it all to normally inaccessible places, the H2 is a godsend. The rest of us can then take comfort in their good riddance.
