Ford Expeditions and Chevy Suburbans were more ubiquitous, but no vehicle embodies the massive, awful family SUVs of the early aughts more than the Hummer. Stylized—incredibly but appropriately—as HUMMER, the brand’s three models were big, ugly, unsafe, and terribly inefficient. They sucked! And they quickly become the official vehicle of the 21st-century douchebag.
The last Hummer rolled off the line in 2009 as GM’s impending bankruptcy, an unsafe reputation, and shifting consumer preferences toward smaller vehicles made continued production untenable. It felt like a rare win for those of us who like smaller, more practical cars.
But now they’re coming back. According to the Wall Street Journal, General Motors is on the cusp of reviving the Hummer brand. But instead of a gas-guzzling monstrosity, the new Hummers would be battery-powered trucks sold under the GMC brand, part of the “all-electric” future GM is envisioning.
Our first choice would be to relegated Hummers to the trash pile of the turn of the century along with non-flat screen TVs and baggy as hell jeans. But if we have to live in a world in which Hummers are still a thing, it’s definitely better that the new Hummers won’t be the environmental catastrophe that their predecessors were.
The new Hummers are expected to be officially announced in a Super Bowl ad starring, of all people, LeBron James, a paid spokesperson for the brand. They won’t be available until 2022 at the earliest, and will likely be a pricey luxury vehicle, the kind of thing you only buy if you have money to waste. So in that sense, the new electric Hummers will definitely carry on the tradition of the brand: overpriced and oversized, but more palatable in a world slowly coming to grips with the climate crisis.
