The Hummer H3 Was The Right SUV At Precisely The Wrong Time

Why doesn’t GM have a Ford Bronco competitor? You’d think that one of America’s major truck and SUV manufacturers would jump at the chance to build a midsize off-roader that splits the difference between a Jeep Wrangler and a Toyota 4Runner. In fact, there’s even precedent for it. Remember the Hummer H3?

Indeed, here was a capable body-on-frame midsize SUV with real off-road hardware and a reasonable starting price that should’ve been an automatic off-road darling. Instead, sales quickly rose before plummeting earthward. So what went wrong? Probably not the H3 itself, even though it didn’t quite have the refinement of a 4Runner.

See, the Hummer H3 launched in 2005 for the 2006 model year, and given the average five-model-year cycle for a generation of a new car, it was venturing out into the stormiest waters General Motors had ever seen. Hummer’s most affordable model is rock-crawling proof that sometimes timing really is everything.

Bring Me The Baby

After acquiring the Hummer brand in 1999, GM decided to cash in on it with the new-for-2002 H2. Guess what? It was a cultural phenomenon. From music videos to “MTV Cribs” episodes to the driveway of Bam Margera, the H2 was an icon of excess. It didn’t matter that it was a heavily reworked GM truck instead of a barely-civilized military vehicle, pop culture ate it up. This left GM sitting on a pile of brand equity, and in 2005, it would capitalize on that further with the H3.

Heralded as the baby Hummer, the H3 took a familiar formula and scaled it down. Starting with the GMT355 platform found underneath the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon, Hummer’s engineers decided to change…a lot. They widened the track, brought the front axle forward, shortened the overhangs, and changed so much it got its own chassis code of GMT345. The result was something that looked a lot like an H2 but cut a silhouette only about five inches longer than today’s Toyota RAV4.

The reworked Colorado bones meant that the standard engine at launch was a 3.5-liter inline-five churning out all of about 220 horsepower—less than some minivans. However, to gauge the efficacy of this engine based on its headline horsepower alone is missing the point. Not only was 225 lb.-ft. of torque at a low 2,800 RPM, useful for low-speed off-roading or even just getting away from a stop light, the Atlas inline-five proved to be a durable engine in countless compact work trucks.

Then there’s everything downstream of the engine. The Hummer H3 featured low-range gearing with a standard 45:1 crawl ratio and optional 68.9:1 crawl ratio, along with an available locking rear differential. That’s not mall crawler stuff, that’s genuine off-road hardware. At the same time, 8.5 inches of ground clearance is nothing to sneeze at, and ticking the option box for 33-inch tires brought that figure up to a cool 9.1 inches. With the big tires, a 39.4-degree approach angle, 25-degree breakover angle, and 36.5-degree departure angle outmuscle some modern rigs like the J250 Toyota Land Cruiser. Throw in 24 inches of maximum water fording depth at five mph and genuine underbody protection, and you have the makings of a proper SUV.

Mind you, the H3 wasn’t exactly quick. In Car And Driver instrumented testing, an early example sauntered from zero-to-60 mph in 10.2 seconds and didn’t quite hit 80 mph during its 17.8-second quarter-mile run. At the same time, on-road handling wasn’t anything spectacular, with the magazine writing, “On the freeway drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles, we found that the big tires soften steering response noticeably, leading to more corrections against desert gusts than you’d make in a car-based SUV.” However, the nature of a tin-roofed SUV and independent front suspension meant that the H3 was a far more refined experience than a Jeep Wrangler, and a base price of $28,935 for the inaugural 2006 model did undercut the Toyota 4Runner by $975.

The result was something of an initial success. During 2005 and 2006, Hummer sold 87,192 of these first-series H3 models. Closing in fast on the volume of the Nissan Xterra, it was the Hummer you could fit in your driveway, a properly capable SUV with a reasonably tight turning circle that was far more livable than its H2 big brother. For 2007, GM would make several improvements, including a punched-out 3.7-liter straight-five making 242 horsepower and 242 lb.-ft. of torque, a new H3X appearance package with more chrome and body-color trim, and a couple of new colors. However, something strange happened: Sales fell slightly.

The Mighty Fall

Yeah, so, 2007 wasn’t a great year. Mortgage-backed securities started to collapse, triggering the global financial crisis. However, beyond New Century failing, the first half of the year was marked by record gas prices. In January, things were still manageable at a national average of $2.237 a gallon according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By May, that figure had punched through the three-dollar ceiling with a national average gas price of $3.157 a gallon. Not a great time to be selling an SUV that could just hit 20 MPG on the highway with its standard manual transmission.

At the same time, anti-Hummer sentiment was still going strong. In July 2007, CBS reported that a Hummer in D.C. was vandalized, seemingly to send a message. As the outlet reported, “On Monday, two masked men were seen taking a bat to every window, knifing each tire and scratching a message into the body: “For The Environ” (sic). The use of these off-roaders as daily drivers had become a firebrand in certain areas, and with the H3, the assault came on two fronts. In addition to this environmentally-related derision, it wasn’t uncommon for H2 owners to look down on the H3 as a lesser vehicle, partly because of its feeble output.

Well, 2008 should’ve fixed all of that with the, in retrospect, comically branded H3 Alpha. Simply put, it was an H3 with a 300-horsepower 5.3-liter V8 under the hood. This injection of firepower shaved a second and a half from the H3’s zero to 60 mph time, and it bundled in a bunch of toys, including a seven-speaker Monsoon sound system and leather upholstery. This wasn’t a simple bolt-in affair, as engineers had to alter the H3’s firewall and frame to make the V8 fit, but it resulted in an objectively more capable baby Hummer. The only downside was the price: Nearly $40,000 was a big hit, especially at a time when much of the McMansion set was tightening their belts.

If 2007 wasn’t a great year, 2008 was the year the bottom fell out. The Dow Jones dropped from roughly 12,000 points in January to nearly 8,000 in November. Some 2.6 million Americans lost their jobs. American home foreclosures soared by 81 percent as reported by CBC News. Given the context, it shouldn’t be surprising that H3 sales fell from 43,431 units in 2007 to 21,373 units in 2008, and that’s despite GM having one more trick up its sleeve.

I’m talking, of course, about the H3T. The pickup truck version of the SUV version of a pickup truck. Sort of. While the H3T, like the H3, was related to the Chevrolet Colorado, it had enough under-the-skin alterations to the point of being distinct. We’re talking frame alterations, suspension relocation, track width adjustment, you know the drill. Simply put, the H3T was an H3 with a five-foot bed, but it didn’t stop there. This 2009 model year addition also brought the availability of a locking front differential, a certified game-changer off the beaten path. My colleague Mercedes Streeter has already written a deep dive on this truck, but to sum it up, the H3T was one of the best off-road midsize pickup trucks of all time. Full-stop.

It Gets Worse

Sadly, the H3T might be the worst-timed variant of the lot. GM only sold 7,533 Hummer H3s in 2009, and if you were watching the news back then, you probably already know what affected it. By November 2008, it was evident that General Motors as a whole was in deep trouble, as it was looking like the automaker would run out of cash in a matter of months. Plans were drafted, funding was sought, some government loans were acquired, but on June 1, 2009, the collapse happened: General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

What led to this monumental upheaval? Well, many things, but it can partly be attributed to the company’s own bloat and partly to the environment in which it grew. Eight U.S.-market brands and 47 U.S. plants mostly churning out cars that usually seemed to take a backseat to competitors from foreign manufacturers. Huge overhead, including such a large workforce that the Economist reported “Every year the cost of retired workers’ health care diverted billions of dollars from developing new models and added $1,400 to the cost of each car compared with those made in Asian and European transplants.” Big incentives hurt residuals of leased models, and the company simply couldn’t keep enough cash flowing to go on.

No matter how you feel about the bailout and restructuring of General Motors, it’s important to note that GM didn’t build all of its own parts in-house, nor did it primarily sell cars directly to consumers. If the firm were to have ended up in Chapter 7 before being stripped for individual parts, the knock-on effects would’ve been huge. Some 11,500 vendors would’ve lost a huge customer, pretty much all employees could’ve lost their pensions, and that’s before we look at the technicians at dealerships just trying to make a living. It shouldn’t be a surprise that government intervention happened. NGMCO Inc., a collective effort between the United States government, the government of Canada, the provincial government of Ontario, the United Auto Workers’ and Canadian Auto Workers’ employee benefit fund, and GM’s unsecured bondholders, picked up the pieces, but that sort of help didn’t come without stipulations.

As part of the restructuring, General Motors had to let go of several brands. Pontiac was taken behind the woodshed, Saab was sold off to Spyker Cars, Saturn almost ended up being owned by Penske before that deal fell through, and Hummer? Well, that was an interesting one. It was originally on the chopping block, but almost as soon as GM entered bankruptcy court, a buyer from China had its sights on the Hummer brand. As Reuters reported:

GM, a day after filing for bankruptcy, said in a statement that it reached a memorandum of understanding with Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co for the sale. Tengzhong said it will retain Hummer’s senior management and operational team.

Keep in mind, China’s homegrown automotive manufacturing efforts at the time weren’t exactly matches for cars from Western brands, and Tengzhong was primarily a builder of road equipment. Still, a deadline was set, with the only condition being approval from officials in Beijing. That approval never came. On May 24, 2010, the last Hummer H3T rolled off the assembly line. A relatively unremarkable unit, it would go on not to a museum, but to fleet service, likely as a rental chariot for tourists. How anticlimactic.

Timing Is Everything

So, where does that leave the H3 today? Well, as a second-hand buy, it can be a pretty capable SUV for not a lot of scratch, provided you aren’t specifically targeting the highly coveted H3T Alpha V8 pickup truck model. However, as an effort, it mostly seems to be a victim of timing. Shortly after the Hummer brand really spread its wings, the tides turned and dragged it out to sea. What amazes me most is that GM hasn’t decided to replicate the H3 in the present day. A midsize off-roader with genuine chops and a blocky silhouette has been a licence to print money over the past five years. Look at the Ford Bronco, the Land Rover Defender, even sales of Toyota’s 4Runner.

By initial metrics, the Hummer H3 was a hit. The dartboard just changed its orientation entirely. Perhaps it deserves to be remembered with a little more reverence than a Hummer for posers or yet another subpar mid-aughts GM offering. After all, achieving around 50 percent of the segment leader’s sales in a single year has to count for something, right?

Top graphic image: Hummer