Launched: Hummer H3

Wheels Magazine
December, 2007

Are Hummer buyers off-roaders or fashionable types? Consider that most of the 400 pre-launch orders for the Hummer H3 were from metropolitan customers, and about 70 percent of them opted for the 'Luxury' variant, rather than the off-road-oriented 'Adventure' and you have the beginnings of an answer.

Which worries us, since our wheel time indicates it is far from the ideal urban vehicle - though pretty handy off-road.

Heading north-east from Melbourne to the Kinglake National Park on the north-western slopes of the Great Dividing Range, the H3 was given the opportunity to prove, or otherwise, Hummer chief engineer Lee Visci's claim that it possesses "direct, more sedan-like steering feel than many four-wheel drives". Which it does, if you compare it to, say, a Jeep Wrangler. But sedan-like steering? Not really.

Its suspension set-up of independent double A-arms with torsion springs up front and a rigid rear axle located by leaf springs at the rear manages reasonable on-road manners, driven sensibly. Press on, however, and there's no hiding the utilitarian roots of the ladder-frame chassis, with 'wailing' and 'understeer' then the only two words in its vocabulary.

Sure, it's not intended to be cornered hard, but how will it cope with a high-speed swerve and recover to avoid a wayward marsupial or, more to the point, a small child? Lucky ESP is standard across the range, I guess.

A single engine is offered: a 180kW/328Nm inline five-cylinder tied to either a four-speed auto or a five-speed manual. It's a five-pot due to packaging constraints - an inline six is too long. Visci admits that a six-speed auto would be nice, too. It's likely we'll see that six-speeder, as well as diesel and V8-powered H3s in the future. Meanwhile, the five-cylinder is adequate for normal driving, but less so when you ask it for rapid progress. Fuel economy - a target for early criticism of the H3 - is an acceptable 13.8L/100km (manual) and 14.5L/100km (auto) according to ADR81 numbers.

The H3's limited glass area lends the interior quite a sombre ambience, and restricts visibility. However, a more serious criticism concerns rear-seat access. For starters, the H3's rear-door opening is an awkward shape, which is made worse by the lack of a side running-board, leaving rear-seat passengers to literally climb in. You're then treated to abysmal rear packaging that's bettered by some small hatches.

Down 'n' dirty back in its natural habitat, the H3 demonstrates genuinely impressive form, ably traversing muddy, rutted trails before we engaged its ultra-low 68.9:1 crawl ratio (Adventure manual) and confidently tackled a dizzyingly steep, rocky climb. Which is good news ... for about a quarter of Hummer buyers.

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