1998 AM General Hummer

Vehicle Tested: 1998 AM General Hummer Open Top

Base Price of Test Vehicle: $63,945 (including destination charge)

Options on Test Vehicle: 1GA Option Package (Central Tire Inflation System, brushguard, trailer towing unit, beadlock), 12,000 lb. winch, 6.5-liter V-8 turbo diesel engine.

Price of Vehicle as Tested: $75,166 (including destination charge)

Some Guys Have All The Luck

by Greg Anderson
Photos by the author

Winning the lottery is a dream for most Americans. We want money the old fashioned way: to have it handed to us by fate. Of course, for every lotto winner there are millions of losers, so the odds don’t favor dreamers. If lottery revenue did not exist, however, many states would probably have no education system, or worse, there would be no money to spend on roads. Then we’d all have to drive vehicles capable of off-road travel. Sure, the sport utility boom has been exploding for a few years now, as proven by consistently high volume sales of the Ford Explorer, Chevy Suburban, Jeep Cherokee, and Toyota 4Runner, among others too numerous to list. But most SUVs never see conditions as harsh as gravel roads, let alone real off-road trails. And truth be told, most sport-utes are not meant for boulder bashing. They’d break.

For people who need to tackle boulders on a daily basis, the choices are as plentiful as the digits on your high school shop teacher’s right hand. You can get a Jeep, or a Land Rover, or…uhh… That’s why the U.S. Army, an avid group of off-road enthusiasts, drives a vehicle called the High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), or Humvee. It’s made in America, and, more importantly, it goes anywhere: through rivers, mud, and snowdrifts, over deadfall, and whatever else you can think to throw in its path. This past winter, a Colorado blizzard made I-25 impassible, stranding hundreds of motorists in their cars and trucks. Impassible, that is, except to the National Guard and their Humvees. With a 72-degree approach angle, 40-degree side-slope capability, 37.5-degree departure angle, and 16 inches of ground clearance, the Humvee is the only vehicle other than a snowmobile that can perform under such duress.

During that horrible blizzard, Monument, Colo. was among the towns hardest hit. Monument lies at the top of Monument Hill, just north of Colorado Springs. And whenever I-25 closes, Monument Hill is sure to be part of the problem. The elevation at that hill is a literal watershed for storm systems moving over the Front Range, and winter snow is a particular hazard. But for one Colorado resident, winter travel just became a little easier. Steve Wilcox won a Hummer.

Truly one of the lucky people, Steve found his fortune in one of those "Enter Here To Win A Hummer" drawings at a trade show. Needless to say, things worked out, and now Steve is the proud owner of the biggest off-road vehicle this side of a Sherman Army tank. News travels fast in this neck of the woods, and Monument is still a small town where everyone greets each other with "Howdy, neighbor." So when Steve started making grocery trips to the Monument Safeway in a bright white Hummer convertible, it didn’t take long for news to reach Denver.

We put in a call to the new Monument celebrity ("the guy with the Hummer parked in front of his garage"), and thankfully, he was eager to let Edmund’s take his winnings for a ride. "Sure, you can drive it. Can I come?"

Stepping into the driver’s seat is like preparing to go on active duty. It’s a climb, but once in place, the driver is rewarded with a comfortable seat and a commanding view of the road. This is the only non-commercial vehicle we’ve driven that looks down on Suburbans and Expeditions. Two large panes of glass sit plum between dashboard and ceiling frame, acting as a windshield. The wipers are mounted on top of the glass, which we think is pretty cool, if it serves no other purpose.

At a glance, the driver is isolated in a sparsely decorated cockpit. Exposed bolts, rivets, and screws abound, but our only real complaint is with the cheap Chevy S-Series climate controls. It looks like GM was able to pawn some of their inferior plastics off on AM General along with their top-quality diesel engines. But in a vehicle of this price, the last thing we want to be reminded of is a Chevy S-10. The dashboard is also low-grade plastic, though its charcoal color sufficiently mutes any glare. Besides being made of shiny plastic, the dash is composed of sharp angles and panels full of instruments, similar to the display faced by pilots of small aircraft. The copilot’s chair, as it were, sits beyond arm’s length far to the right, and the two chairs are separated by an intrusive central doghouse.

From inside, the Hummer is apparently as wide as it is long. The convertible we tested comes with two rear seats, each as out-of-reach as the copilot’s chair, and this arrangement makes for a huge table-sized area separating each passenger. Due to its aurally harsh ride and great space between passengers, conversations can only be carried out with a raised voice. "What’s that you say?! You saw a deer near the trail?! Oops! All this yelling must’ve scared him off!" And so on.

Like all diesel engines, the 6.5-liter behemoth takes some time to warm up, and when it’s ready, a coil indicator light shuts off. Then with a hearty growl, the Hummer comes to life. A four-speed automatic is the sole transmission available, and we were pleased with its performance, though matching revs is not exactly a science in a truck this big. Zero-to-sixty times are as slow as they come. We were able to bring the Hummer to sixty in 18 seconds on a slight slope, but when tested in the opposite direction we came up with a much slower 24 seconds. At an altitude of 6,000 feet above sea level, that’s not bad – for a 6,710 lb. truck – though it does seem to take forever to get up to speed.

But it’s off-the-road prowess that makes the Hummer sell, so that’s where we decided to go: just off the map. Mt. Herman, a 9,400-foot peak overlooking Monument, Colo., has trails wide enough to compensate an 86.5-inch wide vehicle, so we decided to test the mountain. It quickly became apparent that the mountain was outmatched. The Hummer rides on an independent double A-frame suspension with coil springs and hydraulic shock absorbers. Actually, it’s less a ride and more of a glide. The big truck seems to float over all manner of debris, and the steering wheel becomes a sort of rudder control, immune to the road harshness but still capable of negotiating tight passages and providing excellent control.

Our companion vehicle for this excursion (friend Matt Brown in his Jeep), led the way, and even the Jeep decided that the trail needed some shortcuts. Following the Jeep between rocks and hard places was a little harrowing at first, but the Hummer’s amazing traction was able to dig into sandstone and incredibly avoided the grasp of some ornery tree trunks. Treading lightly, of course, we made a point of maneuvering around any topsoil, which was sparse. It’s funny to see trees growing through rocks, but in arid Colorado, they’ll do anything for a little water.

Water on Mt. Herman is indeed scarce, but at one point, a stagnant pond crosses the trail, or vice versa. Upon discovering this pond, we devised another off-road test: fording. A first attempt resulted in discovering the Hummer’s limits. Like any air-breathing animal, the Hummer can choke. The owner’s manual explicitly warns against fording water at speeds over 5 mph, but you need some momentum to get a really big splash, so… Cough! Choked by the water streaming over its hood, the Turbo Diesel died mid-stream, teaching us lesson #1: the Hummer is not a speed boat. Lucky for us, it started up right away, sputtering to regain composure.

The Jeep was not so lucky, nor so equipped with tremendous ground clearance. It died. But the Hummer came through to save the day. Equipped with a 12,000-lb. winch, the mighty monster easily pulled the Jeep to dry ground. Our problem then became freezing rain, which fell as we throttle-started the Jeep. Again. And again. Finally, on the fifth and now rain-soaked attempt, the resuscitation worked. Lesson #2: if a Hummer has a hard time negotiating an obstacle, don’t attempt the same thing in a Jeep. The Hummer has a 30-inch water clearance. In a Jeep, 30 inches floods the cabin.

The soft-topped Hummer makes driving more fun, except among pine trees when the roll bar provides the necessary pine-branch counter-force to thwack rear-seat occupants squarely on the head. And in the event a topless Hummer gets caught in a freak Rocky Mountain freezing rainstorm, no one is filled with glee. The Hummer’s top is easier to install than Jeep’s version of a convertible, but you won’t mistake the effort for entertainment. The surprise storm evinced a quality previously overlooked in regard to vinyl seats: they’re waterproof. And waterproof seats are requisite in a vehicle that will eventually get you into trouble.

With the optional winch, approach angles are reduced to 47 degrees, which is still enough room to approach big rocks or small Iraqi fallout shelters. Steve’s Hummer also came with the optional Central Tire Inflation System, a nifty feature that’s more trouble than it’s worth unless you’re really stuck. Those obese tires take forever to deflate and then re-inflate, and it’s not a good idea to drive off without full pressure. Tires this size carry an equivalent price tag.

The Hummer has the determination of a rock, and can scale most of them. It’s huge; bigger than it appears in pictures, yet it handles with more precision than smaller trucks. A 26.5-ft. turning radius is nimble compared to the oversized sport-utilities of Ford and GM. Good for around-town driving and off-road stomping, the only thing a Hummer is not capable of is anonymity. Everyone asks about it, wants a closer look, wants to sit in it, or worse, wants to take it off-road and write up a road test.

It’s a good thing everyone doesn’t have to put up with that sort of nonsense on a daily basis. I guess most of us are lucky that way.

©1998 Edmund Publications

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