Hummer Owners Don't Like Stigma

SUV buyers avoid getting Hummers more than any other brand because of the image attached to owning one, or so says a survey by J.D. Power. That’s leading GM to change the marketing for the brand to highlight the utility of the H2 and H3.

The new campaign calls Hummers “Purpose Built” to show that people buy them to handle tasks other vehicles simply couldn’t accomplish. Hummers aren’t status symbols, you see, they’re to go white-water rafting after crossing the Rubicon. While it may be a good slogan on its own, we doubt that this attempt to change the image of Hummer will actually stick.

Hummer owners themselves are tired of getting nasty looks, and often find their SUVs vandalized, according to a story in USA Today. New ad campaign aside, we doubt mainstream buyers will stop looking down on Hummers as long as the SUVs continue to get the same — or worse — gas mileage as other SUVs. At least that’s our guess. What’s yours?

Hummer's Feeling a Little Misunderstood (USA Today)

Comments

[Mart]

Hummer could probably turn into a very legitimate Jeep and Land Rover competitor in the off-road scene. The problem though is that they started at the wrong end of the scale, an unfortunate side effect of the popularity of the (huge) military vehicle.

By entering the market with their largest car at a time when that market went sour, they ended up being seen as the worst of the worst. Imagine though, if they'd entered the market with a mega tough compact Wrangler competitor, i doubt their image would have been anywhere near as bad.

Well, maybe it would, but in a different way. No matter what their image, the H2 and H3 are still old skool SUVs with horrifying interior quality and space efficiency. You'd be an idiot to buy one unless you REALLY needed the offroad ability.

[Yeah!!! Aww...Yeah!!!]

Mart has a point.

Make a hybrid. Celebrate its purpose and discount it for public works, purpose built organizations and the like and PR yourself out of the hole you drove into.

You're the only SUV that can get out of it anyway.

By the way...update the interior. If people hate you for gas mileage, wait until they find out your causing a plastic shortage with your interior cladding.

[Dave T.]

Yeah awww yeah,
The H2 interior was updated last year and is much nicer now. The H3 always was pretty good for the segment or above average.

[KJ]

Well "boo-hoo" GM. You produce a product with a bad image so what do you expect? Of course the one and only reason GM makes the Hummer is for greedy profit. This is capitalism at it's absolute worst. Meantime our soldiers are fighting in the middle-east for every drop of oil so a few can drive steroid looking Hummers. That just makes GM suck.

[DodgeFan]

The initial image work and now there is backlash. Except for the orginal hummer (A1) all the others aren't that unique. So I got to agree that the backlash now isn't deserved. I want to see someone vandalize a Prius cause of all the nasty products that go into producing batteries (Sarcaism)

[woogie]

But the current Hummers have nothing to do with the military vehicle.

So if you don't think your Suburban/Tahoe/Canyon can handle the job, why would you select a Suburban/Tahoe/Canyon with a different body on it to do the job?

The misconception is that people think a Hummer is some uber SUV and treat it as such, when it is just a run of the mill GM SUV.

All the Hummer line is take the tree huggers ire away from those mundane SUVs

[DaveInLBC]

Feel sorry for them? Umm, no! You are NOT telling me people here in Los Angeles and Orange County buy an H2 for all of their camping and severe off-roading! A Wrangler is a totally different thing, more versatile. If Hummer only relied on people that actually USE a Hummer for serious off-roading, there wouldn't be many sales. When you build a gas guzzling giant as your first mainstream vehicle, deal with the "image problem"! I don't see Landrover complaining about it's image; they are built to be "tanks" yet are all over urban sprawl!

[cody]

funny thing is, ALL these types of SUVs get about the same, crappy mileage... the wrangler, for its size, is probably one of the worst offenders...

[Richard]

I agree with Dogefan's observation "So if you don't think your Suburban/Tahoe/Canyon can handle the job, why would you select a Suburban/Tahoe/Canyon with a different body on it to do the job?"

I watched morons with H2's in Arizona trying to cross areas where flash-floods had closed access, and without fail, the owners were rescued from the roof of their "UberSUV" by the sheriffs' deputies after the "Hummer" sank. Unfortunately, the image that is produced in the advertising leads people to believe that the Hummer badged vehicles are closer kin to the A1 military vehicle than the Suburban/Tahoe/Canyon vehicles upon which the H2 and H3 are based.
Part of the bad image phenomenon occurs not just because of the abysmal fuel efficiencies of the Hummers, because the other vehicles that are the basis for the H2 &3 are just as fuel inefficient, but because of the obvious "ego stroking smugness" and caviler attitude towards the fuel consumptive, lumbering behemoths that the advertising promotes. Everyone else has figured out that the consumer Hummers are just "pigs with lipstick" and a voracious appetite.

[plugh]

I hear that the "Purpose Built" Hummer Owner condom is the size of a nickel.

[Bowrider]

GM should probably disclose the H2 mileage numbers compared to other vehicles in its class. I would venture to say that they aren't that much different. I don't think the H3 carries the same stigma as the 2. Perception is key and GM is doing the right thing by attempting to change it.

H2s were all the rage before fuel prices rose. The fact is that these fuel prices decreased the product lifecycle of the H2. As such, GM needs to make a change and if advertising is the first change, then good for GM.

Profit motive makes the capitalism world go 'round. How can you blame a company for making a bigger profit? Try telling your shareholders you passed up a marginally larger profit so that you didn't offend anyone.

[DL]

i've never seen an H2 that has a speck of dirt on it. makes sense since people buy it for the "bling" factor, with all the chrome ... it's the only vehicle i know of to generate so much strong feelings in people that there's a site like FUH2.com ...

[Nick]

The funny thing is that every off-road vehicle/brand in the market today started its life as a military vehicle, just most of them entered the market 50 years ago.

If you've actually ever spent any time off-road in either the H2 or H3, you'd know that they are only marginally related to other GM products, and the H3 is one of the best off-road vehicles straight from the factory.

There are just as many posers in other off-road capable SUVs as there are in Hummer models. The difference is that most of those other models have been around longer. I'd bet that once there are more H3s off lease, you'll see more on the trails.

A pretty good example is the owners at www.hummerxclub.com.

The more Hummers and other large SUVs they make and the more we buy...no reason we keep getting ripped off on gas prices!

[Tom L]

The problem is Hummers are not purpose built. The H2 is built on the (last generation) Tahoe platform and the H3 is based on the Colorado.

The only difference between the H2 and old Tahoe was that the H2 utilized a higher suspension to gain ground clearance. Other than that, it was (and is) the same car. Todays H2 has a more powerful engine and better interior (more luxurious, again proving its not an offroad vehicle). And that engine is probably being sold as having more torque than the 6.2L engine its based off of in the Escalade: truth from dyno's suggest it just has less power everywhere.

The H3 is even worse: it even shares the same engines. Sure, it gets a 5.3L now, but its the 5.3L from the LAST GEN Tahoe and Suburban. Once again dealers will probably try and tell people it has more torque, when dyno's will say otherwise.

Why did GM decide to build the old and new version of the 5.3, when the new one is clearly better, and has DOD? No reason, other than that they may not understand unit costs, or had some old ones lying around.

But no matter. If GM wants to sell Hummer as "purpose built," then they need to actually build the Hummer on its own platform, one thats been purpose built (ba-da tsk) for off road use. They also need to figure out how they managed to make these things so heavy even though the transfer case is all the same (where I think most owners blame the weight). Then they will need years to get those videos of snapping steering linkage and bent axles off Youtube.

[Six]

Hummer started as and still is a fashion brand. People *don't* buy a huge, expensive rebranded suburban Hummer to work on a ranch or ride the rubicon.

Hummer is not misunderstood at all, simply they are mis-marketed. Sell them for what they are, expensive status symbols.

If someone actually needs utility (gasp, what a concept), they buy an F-150 or a Jeep. I'd put a Rubicon up against any Hummer off road.

[vvv]

Hummers are purpose-built: to build up the masculinity of the man or woman driving it. Other than that, they are used 99% of the time to haul the kids to school and as bling-mobiles with as much additional chrome as possible. It's no wonder all the windows of H2's get limo-tint around here. Nobody wants to be seen in them!

[J]

Purpose built, but not purposed to drive.

How often, maybe I should ask how many percent of the vehicle's lifetime will it be actually driven at those Rubicon Trails? Off road doesn't really count, because you can get away with a better mileage off-road capable vehicle.