While playing “Three Car Dream Garage for $500k” recently with a fellow automotive tragic,i I found myself selecting a ’24 Hummer EV (on chromed-out 24s) to go with my ’17 GTC4Lusso and ’09 Renault Megane R26.R. While I’d never driven any of these, this trio seemed to cover pretty much every practical base, with some panache to boot.
So while browsing Turo a few weeks ago in search of an uncommon steedii to take us on our annual pilgrimage from Montreal to Quebec’s Eastern Townships, I took the opportunity to rent the most practical of my $500k Dream Garage picks: the GMC Hummer EV 3X.
Picking up the anti-wilting-violet from Bois-Franc metro station, a perfectly pleasant 45-min Bixie bike ride from our downtown hotel, we packed our little family of four into the spacious spaceframe and set our sails east-southeast. This would be a quick 30h round-trip, shorter than the usual 3-nighter in the countryside, but this was an unusual year being that we were fitting this in between the passing of my maternal grandfather on the Thursday, and his funeral on the Sunday (may his memory be for a blessing).
Sombre first impressions of the Humvee? If ever there were a vehicle ideally suited to Montreal’s bombed-out-baghdadian roads, it’s this. With more wheel travel than the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling Competition and burrata-soft suspension,iii the 3X ate up broken tarmac like Old Port tourists eat up poutine.iv This ride comfort, especially when mixed with nose-lifting instant EV torque, not to mention street presence to make even typically assertive quebecois drivers stand aside, the Hummer quickly proved itself an urban assault vehicle par excellence. And isn’t that what EVs should really excel at? Being city cars? I’m certainly inclined to think so. Even the hilariously tight turning radius, which turned otherwise iffy parking lot situations into toy-filled sandboxes, showed where this brute really belonged.
Inside the cabin, General Motors demonstrated strong knowledge and awareness of its actual (urbanite) customers. Physical buttons well suited to the clumsy and oft-gloved hands of North American buyers abound.v Even material quality was very much acceptable for this price point, with cloths that felt durable and showed essentially no signs of wear after 30`000 km, though the driver’s elbow rest surfaces were a bit on scratchy and underpadded side. The sound system was broad and pleasant, easily engaging with the early 2000s pop playlist that was the unexpected soundtrack of my mourning.vi
On the highway, the glass-roofed truck felt spacious, the knobby off-road rides yielding about as much noise as you’d expect, but not enough that the speakers couldn’t drown it out. Thanks to the truly gargantuan 205 kWh battery, we needed only 27% charge to travel 125 km over 2 hours or so on the way out of town, so we travelled in style and elegance with nary a worry for electric range. Even though we started the trip with only 80% charge, we returned it with 25% the next day, yielding a real world mixed-driving range of 450+ km, which is very much acceptable in my books, and a darn-sight better than my Taycan GTS ST could muster.
Looking at the realistic competition in this segment, at $80-100k CAD, I’d take the Hummer EV over a Rivian R1S all day. Would I take one over the other GM SUV we rented earlier this summer to haul around Kelowna BC, the Z71 Suburban? Probably not as an only vehicle, but in a stable of three? Why not, because as a statement of fun and whimsy, the Humvee has a personality the Sub simply can’t match.
Overall, our Canadian roads are no doubt more degraded by this lumbering EV’s 9`000 lbs rolling mass, but visually improved nonetheless by its design. Even if a hybrid-V8 version would be more on-brand and frankly more desirable,vii this oversized golf cart is far from the worst thing to come out of Detroit in recent years. 7.25 / 10
- We also did Three Car Dream Garages for $100k, $250k, and $1mn (all figures $CAD)… what would be in yours? ↩
- Last year we took the all-too-common Cayenne V6 on this trip. A few years ago we took the bruising Bentayga, and it was so exquisitely built and memorable that I can’t help but think I’ll have one in my stable one day… I’ve also taken the RR Ghost on this trip, but it was Camry-bland in the real world. ↩
- Classic innit:
- Though the 911 Dakar remains the more sporting choice for this habitat, with comfort seats at least! ↩
- We’re not delicate little Asians! Barbarians are we, and our vehicular interiors should reflect that. This one does in spades. ↩
- Probably not your typical “Hummer Driver” playlist favourite, but this hit all the right notes that day:
- And Lord knows GM can…
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