Hummer Dinger

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Can you name the truck with four-wheel-drive, smells like a steak, and seats thirty-five?
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Twelve yards long, two lanes wide, sixty-five tons of American pride!

Canyonero! Canyonero!
—The Simpsons, "The Last Temptation of Krust"

A gigantic sport-utility vehicle, built under the philosophy that Bigger Is Better. Smaller cars, or at least their drivers, tremble in fear at its presence on the highway—or maybe it's because the road itself is shaking under its weight. The name will be something bold and authoritative, like "Crusader" or "Kilimanjaro". It's filled with all sorts of equipment to help it tow trailers, climb mountains, and get through the rain, snow, sleet, hail, mud, and whatever else Mother Nature can throw at it... very little of which will be used by 90% of the people who buy it. Instead, it will most likely serve as a mall crawler in Suburbia (or a "suburban utility vehicle"), shuttling tots to soccer games and groceries back to the house. Fuel economy will be measured in either the single digits or in gallons per mile. The driver will be either a very tiny woman, a man in his midlife crisis, or a celebrity (pro athletes, rap musicians and action movie stars are the most common) using it to flaunt his wealth, in which case it will likely also be a Pimped-Out Car. When it comes time for Junior to get his or her license, expect the kid to shudder at the thought of having to maneuver the thing.

Chiefly an American trope, as Europe and Japan's narrower roads, crowded city streets and pricier gas makes such vehicles uneconomical in those places. SUVs first became popular in the late '80s, when the success of the Jeep Cherokee wagon started an arms race to see who could make the largest possible SUV that they could get away with. By around the Turn of the Millennium it arguably became a self-fulfilling trope, with car buyers recommended to buy larger vehicles just so that they wouldn't get squashed if they got in a car accident. It rapidly became a Discredited Trope late in the Aughts due to the rise in gas prices and concerns over safety (specifically rollovers), though the 15-20 year lifespan of the typical motor vehicle means they're still not an uncommon sight on the road.

Likely to show up when a work is carrying a Green Aesop. Compare Absurdly Long Limousine, and God help you if the two are combined. Note that this trope isn't about large SUVs that are actually used for their intended "sport" and "utility" purposes, but rather, for when they are used as suburban status symbols.

Examples of Hummer Dinger include:


Advertising

  • Suzuki once ran a series of ads for one of their smaller SUVs showing off all the things that drivers couldn't do in their competitors' larger vehicles (park in tight spots, be able to reach down to the ticket at the toll booth without getting out).
  • Kia also ran an ad like this, showing the compact Sorento clearing off-road obstacles that much larger SUVs got stuck in.

Film

Literature

  • In The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks claims that SUVs would be Awesome but Impractical in a survival situation, stating that most (but not all) of them are built more for suburbia than off-roading (referring to them as "gas-guzzling, aesthetically engineered, irresponsibly marketed vanity plates").

Live Action TV

  • On Reno 911!, the deputies got issued a Hummer and were ecstatic about it... until they encountered problem after problem due to its bulk and poor gas mileage.

Music

Now once a month pay half your rent to make sure your body's covered
Feel the freedom of the road, with suspension like no other
As long as we get paid you can drive it off a cliff
With your family and your dog inside, we don't give a shit

Newspaper Comics

  • FoxTrot had a storyline where Roger went to a "Humbler" dealership. Said vehicle turns out to be comically huge, have a gas mileage of 25 METERS per gallon and is hinted to be so heavy that it affects the orbit of the Sun.

Video Games

  • Parodied in Grand Theft Auto III with radio ads for the "Maibatsu Monstrosity", an SUV that can seat 12 and cross rivers... "though I've only crossed a couple of puddles. But it's good to know it's there!"
    • Within the games themselves, the Landstalker fills this role perfectly, complete with a tendency to roll over at the slightest provocation, particularly in the III-era games. It's no longer as easy to roll in IV, but it remains slow and lumbering.
    • Zig-zagged with the Patriotic Fervor in the IV-era games, which is specifically based on the Hummer H2. On one hand, the civilian version fits this trope perfectly, with a low speed, a large turning circle and a propensity for rolling over. However, a faster, more agile version is used by NOOSE, the game's resident State Sec, and is a prime choice for one to use in the Vigilante missions due to its speed, mobility and resilience.
      • It's subverted even harder in the III-era games, where it was based on the original Hummer. There, it was also used as a military truck, and even the civilian version was one of the best off-road vehicles in the game.
    • Lampshaded in IV, which has a "Player Image" stat which summarizes the player's image based on the vehicles he rides around in the most. Having any of the game's four-wheel-drive SUV's as your favorite car will grant you the title of "Soccer Mom".
  • The Saints Row games have a giant pickup truck called the Compensator.
  • In the rather silly FMV game Corpse Killer your stereotypical Jamaican sidekick repeatedly informs you of his desire to buy a Hummer and has a sidequest where both of you look for pirate treasure so he can buy one.

Web Original

  • One half of the Trope Namer is a website (now dead) formerly run by the Sierra Club called "Hummer Dinger" that criticized these vehicles. It specifically focused on the Hummer H2 (the other half of the Trope Namer), which it saw as the most Egregious real-life example of this trope.
  • Emo Game 2 featured a boss fight against Tim Allen driving one of these, complete with a mounted machine gun and an Eagle Land Type 2 rant from Allen.

Western Animation

  • Parodied multiple times on The Simpsons
    • The episode "The Last Temptation of Krust" features the Canyonero. The truck's commercial jingle makes up the page quote. Homer complains that it's a women's car when he finds that his "F-series" model has lipstick holders built in instead of lighters, and proceeds to give it to Marge.
    • In another episode, Rainer Wolfcastle talks about his enormous Hummer with Homer.

Homer: What kind of gas milage do you get?
Wolfcastle: One highway, zero city.

  • The first Danny Phantom episode with Desiree has Danny and Tucker drooling over giant Hummer-esque SUVs. Sam talks about how bad for the environment they are, and tries to egg Danny into destroying them. He denies her on the grounds that he's a hero. But Desiree hears the wish and turns them into literal Monster Trucks.

Real Life

  • Chicago Tribune auto writer Jim Mateja had this to say about Dennis Rodman's Hummer:

"The first thing we noticed when the Hummer arrived is that it filled the driveway. The second thing we noticed is that it fills the lane of the highway, too. The Hummer is 6 feet wide and 6 feet tall."

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