2003 Hummer H2

2003 Hummer H2

I've owned a handful of Hummer's, but this one was the first.  I bought this H2 in early 2003, just a few months after they came out.  I thought they were extremely cool and they were generating a lot of buzz as the new poster child for the anti-SUV liberals.  They couldn't miss mine in yellow either.

The airplane-style shifter on the console was a nice touch to me.  Hummer's had a tough guy design, but really shared absolutely nothing with its H1 big brother.  The H2 was smooth and quiet and didn't feel like an off-road vehicle at all.

I never got a chance to off-road this one in fact.  It would have been fine due to its tires and ground clearance, but these were really urban warriors.

My biggest complaint about the H2 is that, for a large SUV, it had very little rear cargo space.  If you put the 3rd row seats in, it was basically nothing.  Getting the spare mounted on the rear would help immensely, but it's still nothing compared to a Suburban, for example.

The interior was surprisingly comfortable.  Mine was pretty much fully loaded with options such as heated seats front and rear and even a built in air compressor (which I never used).

It also had a sunroof and the period popular, but hardly used, OnStar system.  All in all I found the H2 to be a very well designed and great looking truck.  If style and comfort were important to you it was hard to beat.  If you needed more utility out of your SUV, you should have looked elsewhere.  

So should you buy a used one today?  It depends.  They made these until 2009, and they produced quite a few of them.  They aren't as cheap as a similar year Suburban, but they aren't yet collectible either.  If you're buying one for transportation, I would look for something else.  You're going to pay twice what you would for the aforementioned Suburban and this 6000 pounder will get about 10mpg.  Mark my words though - these will be collectible someday.  They will become classics at some point for their unique styling and the fact they, for better or worse, symbolized a period of US history. It was a military-styled gas guzzler  unveiled right after 9/11 that drove the left coast greenies batty (a Southern Cal Hummer dealership was actually burned to the ground at one point).