h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"the ultimate off road wheeled vehicle"

I seem to remember Lamborghini made a 3 ton V12 engined off-roader, the Lamborghini LM002.

http://autozine.kyul.net/strange_car/strange_30.htm

hmm... don't know if it would be considered superiour to the humvee.

Another vehicle that should be taken into account (imho) is the german/austrian "Unimog". According to infos on their websites it can climb up to 100% (? - is that vertical or a 45° angle?), wade through water some 4 ft (1200mm) deep etc. ...

It has been an MPV (multi-purpose-vehicle) for decades, even before other car factories knew how to spell that

Ever heared about that vehicle?

Just search google for "Unimog" ...

Jeremy

those are some awesome vehicles.

100% is 45 degrees, not vertical, which I believe would be a problem, even for the great Unimog.

I also have a problem with the Hummvee/Hummer being referred to as the ultimate off road vehicle. Probably true that the Hummvees were better than LandCruisers in the sand during the Gulf wars. However, driving a Hummvee in a forest with trees and big rocks I would much more prefer an Unimog, a Mercedes G-wagen, a LandCruiser or a Patrol.

Here in Norway the Hummvees are rediculed every winter in the NATO wargames. The huge heavy cars tend to get stuck. At one occation a huge heavy expensive Hummvee had to be pulled out of the snow by an old VW minivan, hippi style.

Is that why weather control is very high on the USAmerican military wishlist?

Excuse me if you have mistaken, went through the link, but I don't understand how can you compare some small toys with Hummer. Please do log on to http://www.hummer.com and read everything carefully before you give further comments. I believe nothing can catch up hummer in mid-segment or Jeep class.

Excuse me if you have mistaken, went through the link http://autozine.kyul.net/strange_car/strange_30.htm, but I don't understand how can you compare some small toys with Hummer. Please do visit http://www.hummer.com and read everything carefully, before you give further comments. I believe nothing can catch up Hummer in mid-segment or Jeep class, not even Unimog which can be better classified into truck or mini-truck segment.

Hello,

Read your message, I don't understand how do you differentiate between MUV(Multi Utility Vehicle) and LCV(Light Commercial Vehicle) or HCV(Heavy Commercial Vehicle) . The Unimog can be better taken as a Truck or perhaps a mini Truck, which comes under LCV or HCV, whereas a Hummer is taken into Jeep family or a MUV (Multi Utility Vehicle)which is being used by Defense Departments and the Medical team of the Defense. You get different models, depending on the purpose. I can give you some more reasons for not considering Unimog with Hummer, being an Automobile Engineer.

Several months since the last post, but I'll throw my two cents in anyway. Having spent 12 months as an M-2 .50 Calibre BMG gunner on a humvee in Iraq I can throw a couple of comments in on them.

1) the article has one error in it. The standard guntruck is not armored. There is an uparmored humvee available weighing in at over 10,000 lbs but most like mine was are not.

2) Even unarmored the M-966 (guntruck model) is the toughest truck I have ever driven. I have gone through snow/mud/sand in them without getting stuck, yes it is possible to get stuck but it takes work.

3) When another car/light truck is the obstacle a humvee can push it out of the way without thinking about it.

4) My humvee, unarmored drove through four Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) Six Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) Countless small arms and rocks. One of the IEDs was a set of four 105mm mortar rounds rigged in a daisey chain. She had a lot of holes in her when she was brought to Kuwait for shipment home, she went through 8 windsheilds 1 replacement fuel tank and ZERO casulties.

The crew of that truck loved her to death when it was all said and down.

As a previous poster has said, a hummer is not regarded as the ultimate off roader by anybody outside of the US because it isn't! There are many in the US that would also argue against it.

A Land Rover defender 90 is a far more suitable candidate for 'ultimate' off roader in production form than any other but even the defender 90 is seriously modified by die hard off roading fans before competing in off road events.

I have owned and driven land rovers for years and even a stock one would beat a hummer on just about any terrain other than the aforementioned vast open sands of a desert region. Try and get a hummer up our forest tracks and it wouldn't fit, neither would it fit on any of our farm tracks, nor mountain passes etc. It would certainly be no good as a rock crawler either with that huge wheelbase and huge track width.

For efficent use of internal space or the number of people it can carry the hummer is not great. A defender can carry the same number of people in a much smaller footprint meaning more agility, better fuel economy and less cost.

Even within the US the hummer wouldn't compete with many smaller vehicles on off road trails.

The hummer is a nice truck though and I would very much like one myself but lets not kid ourselves - it was never designed to be the ultimate off roader, merely a decent, robust and reliable general purpose light truck or weapons platform which it excels at.

I also heard that the hummer was simply a rip off of early Lamborgini LM002 prototype, the cheetah (still availabe as an R/C toy from Tamiya!) with its huge travel independant suspension, wide compartment body and big engine. In fact if you painted an LM002 in NATO green it would quite easily be mistaken for a hummer. The US military asked for manufacturers to submit a design for testing and strangely nobody other than lamborgini came up with the goods. The US had no intention of buying from such a company so simply stole the design instead.....even if that isn't true, the end result was the Hummer does indeed look remarkably like an LM002 even down to some basic mechanical levels.