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The Good Oil: Hummer Lives! (Sort of)

December 16, 2015

Every week Damien writes The Good Oil column for the NZ Herald’s DRIVEN Saturday magazine – each day we will bring you one story from the latest one, with a link to the entire thing!

Remember Hummer? Well, it seems that the single awesome car that they never built is back. Sort of.

In 2008 Hummer unveiled the HX, a smaller (i.e. vaguely sane sized) 4WD aimed squarely at the Jeep Wrangler. While it was smaller than the ridiculously large Hummers that went before it, the HX took all the cliched Hummer styling cues and went utterly over the top with them, which strangely made the HX look brilliant!

0812splhummerhx

Unfortunately, just as the company was poised to make a decent car (well, at least one that looked good) things went pear-shaped for Hummer, and General Motors pulled the plug in 2010 after being unable to unload it on to the Chinese.

But the HX is back. Well, at least most of it is, as an American company by the name of US Specialty Vehicles is taking orders for the Rhino XT — a conversion kit for a current model Jeep Wrangler that transforms it into an almost-exact replica of the HX concept car! Minus the trademarked (and much fought over) seven-slot grille, of course.

The Rhino XT costs US$75,000 ($113,000), making it hideously expensive for a Jeep, but just look at it!

Read the latest Good Oil column here!