> I always get a chuckle out of seeing the country-club types with their big
> fancy luxury SUV's with the polished chrome brush bars and the big safari
> light package... knowing that the furthest they ever take them off-road is
> when they possibly might miss the edge of the driveway by an inch or two
> because they can't see over the hood.
I've got about 40 miles of trail running under mine already. I think
that's about 40 miles more than 99.9% of them. Why 40? I had to get
back to a point where my cellphone would work so I could do my nightly
call with the family. Otherwise, I would have done a lot more.
>Or the same group of people who
> drive a Hummer H1. Or bought an H2, which is nothing more than a huge
> steel box on a pickup-truck frame.
There is a huge difference between an H1 and H2. The H1 is the real
deal and suitable for serious dirt. The problem with it is that it's
too big. Most of the really fun trails are too tight for it. They also
get nasty stuck because they can't share the same ruts as the other
4-wheelers and end up dropping one side down into a chasm of some
sort. I've seen my share of pictures and videos of Jeeps pulling them
out of the nasties.
The H2 is just a fancy Surburban with smaller windows. Give me an FJ
Cruiser over the H2. Then there is the H3 which can't even clear it's
throat, much less a handful of pea gravel.
> I remember reading an article once where H2 owners were complaining because
> they were getting something like 8mpg and there was a lot of wind noise at
> highway speeds.
If you can't afford the gas, you can't afford an H2.
> Hello? You just bought an 8600lb rectangular steel block on wheels and
> you're complaining it has wind noise? Didn't you test-drive the thing
> before you plunked down the $60k?
The H1 was seriously noisy just sitting there with the engine turned
off. There is no disguising the fact that it's just a military vehicle
with air-conditioning. The H2 had nasty wind noise because of the
blocky design and inadequate insulation. But that didn't matter,
because the tire noise came right up through the suspension mounts
into the cabin. When it comes to off-roading, the vast majority never
leave pavement either. That's probably a good thing, since it's mostly
a poser in the dirt.
:)
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
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