The Hummer H1 still has a presence about it. Even all these years after the civilian model of the Army truck hit the streets, they still draw attention wherever they go. Why? They are huge, they are as wide as a city block, and they are capable of crawling, smashing, or simply bashing through basically whatever gets in their way. But what did people think about them when they first hit the market? As it turns out, the crew at MotorWeek was there for a fun tail ride where they basically pitted the big H1 against people with modified Jeeps and normal off-roading stuff. It was a brilliant way to illustrate the ability of the lumbering diesel giant and it showed off just how capable the military needed the real version to be when it hit the battlefield.
It is kind of funny to see these trucks in the context of being “new”, right? They had some different seats in them than the military used, they had an AC unit that could just about get the thing down to freezing inside, and they had a small selection of colors that you could opt for. All in all, they kind of awkward in the sense of it being like a bad ass military fighter in Sunday church clothing but they did everything their owners wanted and more…slowly.
These trucks were rocking the indestructible but powerless 6.5L diesel V8 back then. Swapping Duramax and gas big block engines into these H1s has been a cottage industry for some time now and having just seen what a 1,000hp H1 looks like last weekend, I can tell you that it’s the right move.
The Hummer H1 is still bad ass to us. Surplus of civilian, they’re trucks the likes of which we’ll never see made new again.
