From the January 2005 issue of Car and Driver.
Sales of the Hummer H2 are slowing. Even with a healthy shot of incentives, 19,944 units were delivered in the first nine months of 2004 to Schwarzenegger wannabes, a 20-percent decrease from a year before. Uh-oh, time to spruce up the line. So the Hummer people have responded by creating a brother for the H2. It's called the Hummer H2 SUT-that's for "sport-utility truck"-and it works out to an H2 with four doors and a pickup bed instead of the enclosed cargo area. It starts at $53,055, about a grand more than the wagon.
For the extra dough, you get a plastic cargo bed that measures 47.3 inches between the wheel wells, 34.7 inches from front to back, and 20 inches deep. By full-size-pickup standards, it's puny, and it isn't big enough to carry any of the messy, wet items like dirt bikes or Jet Skis.
There is, however, the folding rear bulkhead, which Hummer calls the Midgate. As on Chevy's Avalanche, the Midgate works like an old-style tailgate, with a power-operated rear window. Once the window is retracted and the rear seats folded, the Midgate can then be folded into the cab.
With the Midgate down, the load-floor length increases to 72.8 inches, but now all the grimy junk that pickups are so good at hauling intrudes into the cabin as well.
Another item unique to the SUT is the spare tire mounted on the exterior. At first this seems like a great idea since the huge spare intrudes into the cargo area of the wagon H2. For the SUT, the spare is mounted on a beefy arm at the rear that swings clear when you want to lower the tailgate.
The problem is that the spare is now located directly above the hitch receiver, leaving a tight gap between the bottom of the tire and the hitch ball. Even when you manage to get the trailer hooked up, you can't lower the tailgate because now the spare's carrier arm is blocked by the trailer jack. It's too bad it's such a pain to hook up a trailer, because the SUT can tow 6700 pounds.
Here's another niggle: With a six-footer situated comfortably in the front seat, there's not enough room in the rear to fold the seats without motoring the power front seats forward.
Clearly, buyers are getting a certain "look" with the SUT, and certainly, the vehicle attracts attention, although it's not always the positive kind. In August 2003, an apparently angry individual torched 20 H2s at a dealership in West Covina, California. There's also a Web site where the less fanatical display their disapproval by posting pictures of themselves standing next to H2s, giving them the finger (www.fuh2.com). Oh, no, not that! Perhaps these individuals are upset with the H2's EPA fuel-economy ratings: 10 city and 13 highway. We averaged 12 mpg over 1600 miles.
Those folks probably don't appreciate the way the H2 SUT goes down the road. It can feel big and cumbersome at times, but it's not the sloppy beast you'd think it is. The ride is actually quite good, and if there's not a strong cross wind, the H2 SUT stays reasonably put on the highway. Once you climb aboard, the seats are comfortable and the rears are large enough for full-size adults.
Both H2 Hummers use GM's 6.0-liter V-8 engine. For 2005, there are nine more horsepower and five more pound-feet of torque. That puts the total at 325 horses and 365 pound-feet. With 6780 pounds to haul, acceleration is not brisk, but it is quicker than in a wagon we tested in August 2002. The jog to 60 mph takes 9.6 seconds, a whopping 1.1-second improvement that suggests our original test vehicle didn't have all its beans. Likewise, the braking performance was markedly better, requiring 214 feet to stop from 70 mph-30 feet better than that '02 wagon. Plus, there was noticeably less brake fade with the SUT. Since the SUT and the wagon are mechanical twins, we can only surmise that the '02 test vehicle-an early-build example-wasn't completely up to snuff.
We didn't get a chance to do any rock crawling, but we doubt the SUT has lost any of the wagon's off-road prowess. It has the same full-time four-wheel-drive system with a push-button-selected low range.
And also like the wagon, there's that in-your-face quality about the H2 SUT that is joyously un-PC.
