NEWS: Hummer- RIP

I would like to take this time to mark the passing of the Hummer (H1), which, as recently announced, will be discontinued after 2006. Before the Hummer few had thought to use a military vehicle for civilian purposes. But with its introduction in 1992 a tool originally designed to drive through mountain terrain and across battlefields was now available for tools to drive as they went to the grocery store and picked up their kids at soccer practice. No other vehicle could so effectively endanger national security, the environment, and the lives of all those on the road all at the same time. With the Hummer no longer available where will people turn to next as they look to declare these issues are of no concern to them because they are so much better than you? Perhaps to the tank, or as Dane Cook suggested, the cement mixer.

While considered a status symbol, the Hummer itself enjoyed special status. Due to a loophole in legislation, which had originally been intended to aid farmers, owners of a Hummer were able to write off up to $100,000 as business expense. And due to another loophole it, as a vehicle weighing over 8,400 lbs (the H1 actually weighs over 10,000), was not required to reveal its gas mileage to consumers. Gas mileage however has been estimated at near 9 miles per gallon (less than half the efficiency of the original Ford Model T).

Still, while the time of the original Hummer may now be passing its legacy will live on in the H2 and H3. The H2, a slightly smaller (but still enormous) version of the H1, has seen sales triple since last year, which seems to assure that the behemoths will continue to guzzle gas and pollute the environment at a remarkable rate for years to come.