By Ross Ballot
The first civilian Hummer products were pure novelty, an expensive cosplay outfit for those who sought attention and fanfare without the luxury usually associated with such. Times have changed, and yet the Hummer hasn’t; like its predecessor, the newest H3X Pickup is seriously capable off-road and yet seriously flawed, and it’s still one of the wildest and most fun vehicles on the road today– especially if kids’ opinions come into the equation.
Hummer Is As Hummer Does
I first drove the GMC Hummer EV back in 2023 and public awe has hardly ceased since then. Thanks largely to its sci-fi styling and simultaneously to its sheer size (it measures 216.8 inches long, 86.7 inches wide, and 79.1 inches tall), the Hummer Pickup has massive visual presence. We wouldn’t go so far as to call it dripping with curb appeal, but it’s an eye-catching, attention-drawing thing that succeeds on this front just as the General Motors teams intended: People stare at it wherever it goes.
Inside is just an extrapolation of the outside: Big, blocky, chunky controls and copious space. Materials are so-so and quality isn’t exactly the name of the game, yet we doubt anyone in the market for a new Hummer is cross-shopping it with a Porsche. Maybe a Cybertruck, versus which the build quality might as well be that of a Lexus, but this is a different class of vehicles and class of buyers. Machismo reigns above all else.
Imperfect, But It Almost Doesn’t Matter
Driving the Hummer is, frankly, underwhelming and polarizing. The ride quality is crashy, undoubtedly a consequence of the size, weight, cannon-sized air springs, and 22” carbon fiber wheels. It’s also just not particularly engaging, which is a bummer given how much tech is on board. They could have made it sporty, yet instead it feels as if it’s fighting physics and its own existence to stay restrained and buttoned down. This truck is an overweight linebacker hopped up on ten energy drinks and stuffed into a Halo-derived Master Chief costume. It works, but you get the sense it has to try very hard to make it work.
There’s a few other issues to touch on, again relating to quality. The roof panels creak incessantly over rough roads, and the panels can’t be dimmed so you bake inside on a hot day even with the A/C cranking. The air suspension on my test truck also got stuck on its highest and second highest modes multiple times while the vehicle was in my care.
Hilariously Fast And Maneuverable
The saving grace for the driving experience is two-fold: The immediate, massive speed (thanks to 1,160 horsepower), which allows the 9,063 pound pickup to rocket from 0-60 MPH in under 3 seconds. It’s hilarious, pointless, and truly terrifying. And for $131,770 as-tested, it should be exciting. It delivers on this front, especially when you engage Watts to Freedom mode.
Also positive is the maneuverability, which benefits enormously from aggressive rear-steer. Instead of the traditional lumbering steering of a full-size pickup, the Hummer has a tiny 37.1-foot turning circle with four-wheel-steer engaged. Parking the truck in a tight lot is still a high-focus experience, but the way the Hummer can pivot seemingly on the spot transforms its cruise ship size into something you can actually manage when other cars are parked close by.
What Really Matters Here Is The Wow Factor
Enough ragging on this thing. Of course it’s bad on paper and in “reality;” the Hummer isn’t meant to be evaluated like a normal truck, after all. The Hummer is something that exists for the experience first and foremost. And with the Hummer, I gave a group of kids a truly unique experience, letting them play around in the Hummer and explore one of the weirdest and wildest vehicles on sale today.
It started when I got wind of an upcoming section of my older daughter’s daycare curriculum. The topic for one week would be “cars,” so naturally I jumped at the opportunity to show my love and passion for the topic, offering to bring in a vehicle for show and tell. Thanks to the team at FMI who arrange the loans for the majority of vehicles I review, we lined up what turned out to be the perfect kid-pleaser.
A few weeks later, I rolled into the daycare parking lot in the middle of one morning of “car week” with the Hummer ready to impress. The front roof panels were off, the windows down, and the truck looking properly mean against the crossovers and small sedans that filled the rest of the vicinity. The kids walked out of the school’s front door and their jaws dropped.
After copious yelling and shouting about how cool (and big!) the Hummer is, I tried my best to talk to the kids about gas versus electric and the likes, but they probably couldn’t have cared less; this was all about the real life monster truck sitting up front. After a few minutes of ogling the behemoth we let the kiddos climb into the cabin via the driver side back door, crawl through the cavernous cabin (with the second row seats folded up), look up at the sky through the open top, and then hop out the passenger side rear door. We took a group photo with everyone loaded up in the truck’s bed, each kid wearing a massive smile only the Hummer could have been responsible for.
Eventually my show-and-tell time was up, so I explained the truck’s CrabWalk mode, how the rear tires will turn the same way as the fronts at low speeds, and told them to watch carefully as I drove away. Whether they did or not is irrelevant; as I drove past the school on my way home, every single one of them was standing up front, waving manically at me– and perhaps more so at the Hummer. The silly electric concoction from General Motors makes gods out of mortals, at least in the eyes of three- and four-year-old kids. Days later, kids in my daughter’s class were still telling me about how cool they thought the Hummer was.
It’s hard to endorse a vehicle so needlessly large and inefficient, but the Hummer is a certain kind of lovable that just doesn’t exist in most modern vehicles. You drive this, and in the eye of children and onlookers, you are a superhero. At least for a day. There’s no doubt that novelty will wear off once the realities of living with a truck larger than the britches it’s trying to fit in outshine the fun factor, but in small doses the smiles can’t be beat. And to a group of kids? Smiles are what matter.
Yay
- Presence only a Hummer could muster
- Party tricks aplenty
- Good maneuverability for its size
- Exceptional speed, especially given the vehicle’s mass
Nay
- Terribly inefficient for an EV
- Weight and dimensions impact everything from livability to practicality
- Too macho and in-your-face for most
- Woefully expensive
The Takeaway
- Star of the show wherever it goes– especially daycare– the GMC Hummer H3X Pickup is a real-life monster truck not so well suited to the real world in which it lives. Imperfect as it may be, it’s excellent at achieving its desired effect, and though it doesn’t really need to exist in the first place, we’re still glad it does.
(The manufacturer provided insurance and a fully charged battery for this loan, and thanks as always to the team at FMI for arranging and coordinating logistics).