Hummer History

How the military's Humvee went civilian

Harold Pace / autoMedia.com

Even though the Jeep was the motorized symbol of the American army during WWII and the Korean War, by the 1970s it had become obsolete. The military needed a new general-purpose vehicle efficient at moving soldiers and light equipment to the battlefield. How that vehicle came into being and turned into a civilian model as well is a war story in itself.

The call went out to three veteran military contractors: Chrysler Defense, Teledyne Continental and AM General Corporation (AMG). The latter was a distant relative of the old Willys-Overland company that had designed the first Jeep prior to WWII. Unfortunately, in the 1930s Willys didn't have the production capacity needed so initial Jeep production had been handled by Ford and General Motors. AMG began producing Jeep derivatives during the Korean War.

HMMWV

Located in South Bend, Indiana, AMG had cranked out thousands of Jeeps before winning the Jeep replacement contract in 1983. Their new vehicle received the military nomenclature of High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV). Soldiers found this to a mouthful and quickly nicknamed them Humvees. AMG officially named the vehicle the Hummer.

The design was an engineering triumph. It was 15 feet long, 7 feet wide and weighed over 5,200 pounds. Based on a steel frame with an aluminum and fiberglass body, the Humvee sported a fully independent suspension and a General Motors 379-inch diesel V-8 engine producing 150 horsepower and enough torque to pull a freight train. An automatic transmission put the power to the ground through an all-wheel drive system with geared hubs. The all-terrain tires were 36 inches tall and air pressure could be adjusted from the cockpit. Top speed was just over 60 mph.

Various Versions

Although most Hummers have a family resemblance, there were over 20 versions optimized for specific military applications. The most pressing need in battlefield transport was ferrying troops and material, and the M998 version was designed to do just that.