#HummerH2

Today marks Part III and a conclusion to our series on the 2003 Studebaker XUV. We’ve covered the truck’s announcement and immediate lawsuit action from General Motors, who were not keen to let something so similar to the Hummer H2 enter production without a fight. We join the action post courtroom.

We introduced the Studebaker XUV in Part I of this series, a concept SUV for which Avanti Motors was immediately sued upon by GM upon its debut. Barred from producing any H2-esque vehicle, their chairman thought up a way to differentiate the XUV in the marketplace: Make it “feminine!”

In part five of our six-part series on the Studebaker Avanti, I mentioned a concept the company debuted in the early 2000s, the XUV. A Big Tough Truck styled almost-just-like the crazy popular Hummer H2, consumers weren’t the only party to take notice. Let’s talk lawsuit.

As I was considering some serious topics yesterday, namely the Jaguar XK8 as a used car buy and the new GMC Hummer EV, I came to the realization we’d never touched on any Hummer vehicles in the Rare Rides series.

It’s an oversight which is rectified today!

I just spent two weeks on vacation in Vietnam, and my pre-trip expectations of seeing fleets of left-behind-by-the-French Peugeots, left-behind-by-the-Americans Falcons, and left-behind-by-the-Soviets GAZs turned out to be ridiculously inaccurate. I saw a few old cars (more on that later), but most of the cars in Vietnam are boring late-model rides like Kia Rios and Toyota Innovas. However, I did see quite a few conspicuous-consumption statusmobiles in Saigon and Hanoi; the grumbling old-time revolutionary veterans no doubt refer to the current Hanoi leadership as CINOs. Here’s an example I spotted near St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Hanoi’s Old Quarter.

[Note: A significantly expanded and updated version of this article can be found here]

That air presented the greatest obstacle to automotive speed and economy was understood intuitively, if not scientifically since the dawn of the automobile. Putting it into practice was quite another story. Engineers, racers and entrepreneurs were lured by the potential for the profound gains aerodynamics offered. The efforts to do so yielded some of the more remarkable cars ever made, even if they challenged the aesthetic assumptions of their times. We’ve finally arrived at the place where a highly aerodynamic car like the Prius is mainstream. But getting there was not without turbulence.