Lorenzo Detoma has nothing against technical advances. But in his 2002 Hummer H1, he finds they aren’t mandatory. “One of the things I love is how analog it is in this digital world,” he says. “The only digital piece of equipment on the whole vehicle is the odometer. It feels like a tank when you drive it, stable and confident.”
Perhaps that’s because the Hummer H1 is based, of course, on the military’s High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), or Humvee for short, which probably had more in common with a tank than with your average SUV.
When AM General initiated sales to civilians beginning in 1992 with a modest 316 that year, it had toned down the military-ness, but only a little. The H1 is, after all, the only vehicle in the 2023 Bull Market lineup that has big steel loops coming out of the hood, left over from where the military attached a parachute so they could launch Humvees out of the back of C-130s.
