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Dirt Cred and Star Wars
Peter W. Frey
Suppose for a moment that you were an SUV manufacturer and wanted to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that all the vehicles in your lineup had the ‘dirt cred’ to go head-to-head with the most famous and long-running off-roader on the planet… Jeep. What would you do?
Well, if you were Hummer, and had both boundless faith in your hardware and the services of an off-road racing legend like Rod Hall, an 18-time Baja 1000 winner and the only man to have competed in every event since the first one, you’d assemble a small army of brand-new, dead-stock 2008 H2 and H3 Alpha models, fill up the driver’s seats with journalists and set off to re-trace the original route of the Baja 1000 from Ensenada to La Paz.
Rationale for this seemingly mad enterprise also included 2007 being both the 40th Anniversary of the Baja 1000 and Hall’s 70th birthday, though looking at him, you could easily conclude that racing off-road vehicles for a living is some kind of miracle anti-aging activity.
Now that they’ve discontinued production of the original, military-based H1, the H2 ($56,000 - $62,000) is the big brother of the Hummer family with changes for 2008 that include an all-new, much-refined interior and instrument panel, more comfortable seats and a full third row of seats. New standard safety features include an upgraded electronic stability control system with rollover mitigation technology, panic brake assist and roof rail head curtain side air bags with rollover sensing system. The all-new 6.2-liter V-8, mated to a 6-speed automatic, delivers more power and efficiency and increases the H2’s towing capacity to 8,200 pounds.
The ‘little brother’ H3 Alpha ($38,000 - $43,000) was engineered in conjunction with the GM Performance Division and is distinguished a 5.3-liter V-8, 300 horsepower engine replacing the previous 242 horsepower, 5-cylinder engine. The new engine is mated to a 4-speed automatic and can tow a 33% heavier load, up to 6,000 pounds, than 2007 models. The 2008 H3 Alpha also includes the popular “Luxury” equipment package, featuring 16-inch chrome wheels and a 4.10 rear axle ratio.
It took four days to get from the gathering point of the expedition, the bullfighting ring in Ensenada, the original starting point of the Baja 1000 forty years ago, to La Paz, a sophisticated seaside city full of interesting modern architecture. Portions of the trip were on typical Mexican highways, just shy of two lanes wide and dangerous as hell, but the rest of the trip was over the dirt and rocks of remotest Mexico, a landscape so arid and alien and full of things either sharp of poisonous – or both – that any mechanical malfunction would be a true emergency.
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On 8/7/2007 Jennifer wrote: ok,before all ofyou hummer-lovers get too cocky,have you seen the past two issues of Forbes magazine? this week,there's an article about a 1933 MODEL T that out-drove a HUMMER What does that do to the "dirt cred" of this beast? all roar and no rev?
