rev up your engines today I'm gonna talk about why Hummers are terrible vehicles
I have to admit Hummers are interesting vehicles because they failed twice
they failed both in the commercial market where they sold them to the
public and in the military market where they didn't meet the needs of the army
they weren't armored enough people got injured even the army isn't gonna be
using them for much longer the Army's replacing Hummers with the
joint light tactical vehicle take explosions better so the people inside
aren't injured and could carry more so it failed militarily but it also failed
commercially GM lost money on the deal now the reason they sold them to the
public basically because of Arnold Schwarzenegger the story goes as told by
Arnold that he saw a bunch of money was driving around in California and said I
want to get one of these so back in 1991 he went to the company said hey can you
build me a legal civilian version of your Humvees well I guess Arnold was
really persuasive so they built him one he had the first one then I guess
they decided hey we're gonna build them for the public one can only wonder if
Arnold would have seen an m1 Abrams tank driving down the road
perhaps they would have tried selling that to the public and if GM had
hindsight they probably wish that they'd never listen diurnal because they lost
money I never had any profit on them and they were gigantic gas guzzlers right at
the time when people started talking about hey we need higher gas ratings
things are gonna get better gas mileage hey the large H1s the military
version will get like three miles a gallon in a city and like seven months
ago on a highway I didn't go all that fast their top cruising speed was like
55 they could go 74 once in a while but the top cruising speed was 55 so it's
not exactly an American Cruiser and of course their size the H1s are so big
they don't fit in some parking spaces and they're not that easy to work any of
they're so big you need heavy-duty equipment you can't go autozone buy
cheap a little Jack and think you're gonna Jack that thing up to work on
so of course GM tried making h2 and the h3s making them smaller trying to
turn them into SUVs but ultimately the Hummers they were a commercial failure
now the military version only have diesel engines and they started selling
them commercially with diesel engines but Americans they're not that into
diesel engines so then they put v8 gasoline engines in them but really
those v8 gasoline engines weren't made for pulling a vehicle like that the
diesel engines have a lot more torque for a heavy thing like that so of course
the ones with the gasoline and just they end up getting even worse gas mileage
plus they had problems with the engines breaking down the transmissions breaking
down on such a heavy vehicle I assume that's why they came out with h2 and h3
to make a smaller vehicle it wouldn't be strained as much but still the whole
idea of it it's kind of flawed a couple months ago one of my customers went to
one of those auctions where they were selling all the old military stuff he
got himself a military Humvee for $2,500 so we towed it over here and I looked and
I said man this thing is in rough shape
why do you think the military got rid of it now he showed me his receipt which I
took a picture of on my phone and on his receipt that legal document and some of
the things that said fuel leaks not checked cooling system missing hoses
not checked, limited function check the engine could not be started on the very
end it says disputes this has an ironclad assurance if a buyer discovers
the item is not substantially in the condition is representative the buyer
may submit a written dispute claim well since it said they couldn't check the
fuel system the cooling system that the engine did not start
yeah the guaranty isn't much of anything it just says as they described it and
they described that this thing didn't even run it was missing a bunch of
pieces so if you are a real weekend warrior and you want to get yourself a
Hummer and you have decades of weekends in front of you that you want to play
around with this thing and have it as a toy be my guest
go right ahead don't think you're gonna buy one of these things and use it as an
everyday driver because even if you spend a lot of money spend 30 or 40
grand on one that's been all fixed up they are not
very reliable vehicles after all they were made by General Motors and we're
originally made for the military where gas mileage means nothing they burn up
fuel like mad and all their vehicles from Humvees the tanks the Jets fuel
doesn't mean anything to them and also longevity they spent a lot of their
times having their battle vehicles being repaired it's just a normal expectation
of anything the military is if they're gonna spend a lot of time fixing the
things and fix them with guys whose only job is to fix them so they learn quite a
bit about it as I said even GM realized while the songs are the public we better
put a gasoline engine and I'm because Americans don't know much about diesel
engines of course putting the gasoline engine and something that heavy that was
a step backwards not a step forwards and as I said it was a commercial failure
selling to the public but it was also a military failure it turns out that the
thing is basically too big for the public driving around but it was too
small and lightweight for the army people were seriously injured or killed
because they didn't have enough armor and then guys in the army were saying
hey bring us some stuff I'm sure they were welding stuff on in a field too to
try to make them safer so too big for the American wrong too small for the
army to me it's just another GM product that failed not enough research done on
what it's gonna be used for and how it's gonna be used, it's an image thing
for most guys they wanna be like Arnold Arnold driving his Hummer around so it's
got the image of real he-man driving around these giant vehicles but really
my son was in the army two tours in Afghanistan when he got out of
Afghanistan he said I'll never ever go on another one of those Humvees so the
real man once they were in them in the war they're like no we don't need those
things anymore we're staying far away and some have very bad memories of them
too so they don't even wanna look at them but the guys didn't want to play
man huh maybe they'll go out and buy one of these things and if they see it as a
toy they want to play around with it hey it's their money there's a whole bunch
of endless money pit Humvees out there in junkyards Salvage auctions I mean you
can get them pretty cheap just realize that time and no money you're gonna have
to put into one of those things to get it running and what you're
have to spend to maintain the thing if you drive it any serious amount of
mileage each year now coincidentally enough GM stopped making the Hummers
after they came out of that big bankruptcy they had cuz they said hey
then I'm making us any money so we're not gonna make them I guess the
bankruptcy shook GM up a bit and they realized hey it was a fantasy gone wrong
so they stopped making them and when they came out of bankruptcy and as I said
from 2005 to 2010 they were making those little H3s in Shreveport Louisiana
but they were a failure to their quality control was garbage I had a customer with
one he was always coming over here because
he used it as a regular vehicle he was driving 20,000 miles a year on that once
he got 40,000 miles on it pretty much started to fall apart the electronics
were garbage and even though it was a smaller vehicle it's still got horrible
gas mileage now he bought his h3 semi loaded for $42,000 and we got rid of it
when it was four years old man did he lose his shirt he only got $18,000 for
it so didn't have a resale value either I mean it's not you the h3 they were
like they're not as macho looking so you got the macho image kind of
disappeared their quality was actually worse than the earlier ones it's time
went on they just started to make things cheaper like GM always seems to do and
interestingly enough the factory in Shreveport Louisiana
I made the h3 it was leased to that crazy guy who makes the three-wheeled
Elio well I should say is planning on making a three-wheeled elio they've
never actually produced on a production line every year they say next year now
they're saying next year and next year they'll say next year eventually the
guys got to go bankrupt because you can't just keep pretending you're gonna
make something I never do anything about it but at least hey it looks like it's
not gonna lose a whole bunch of money cause they're not gonna make any
probably so if you don't make it he can't lose that much money
who ever invested in a company well they lose their money there's no arguing that
but it's not like GM that lost a lot of money making those Hummers made a bunch
of them and just was not profitable endeavor after all General Motors only made
eleven thousand eight hundred and fifteen of these H1s at that low
production level and they had make them right they had to have all the
machine and everything set up it was a money loser for GM because it's one
thing if you're making vehicles from the military where it's pretty much cost
plus they can charge whatever they can get away with versus selling it to the
public where there's competition over what people can buy and lower quality
for lower price it kind of bit them in the rear end as they got poorer and
poorer made people realize that the few that actually bought them so in my
opinion if you want to be a he-man and buy yourself a Hummer h1 go right ahead
it's your money real man like my son he's driving a Toyota Tacoma
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