Comparison Tests
Five days before participating in this comparo, I was in Japan, driving a Suzuki hybrid. It weighed 1550 pounds. It sat atop a 70.9-inch wheelbase—the length of an old Schwinn parked in my basement. Then I suddenly found myself back in just-thawing Michigan, shepherding a 5660-pound Mercedes-Benz G55 AMG and a 6540-pound Hummer H2—more than six tons of bad attitude and generally dishonorable intentions. It was like playing two hours of rugby after a mixed doubles set of croquet.
It is safe to say that the Geländewagen and the Hummer are two peas in the Jolly Green Giant's pod. Both are slab-sided boxes with high beltlines. Both sport tack-on fender flares, upright windshields, utilitarian bumpers as big as workbenches, vast running boards, subway-size grab bars above their glove boxes, side-marker lights held in place with exposed Phillips screws, old-fashioned round headlamps, side-view mirrors mounted on ancient swivel posts, flat grilles, and gaping black-plastic hood vents. What's more, both are descended from trucks still in military service—the fat, idle sons of hard-working leathernecks.
Mercedes currently offers two G-wagens. There's the $74,320 "entry level" G500, producing 292 horsepower. Then there's the $90,620 G55 AMG, with a half-liter of bonus displacement and 349 horses. For this test, Kleemann USA started with the latter, supercharging the pot-walloping V-8 until its dyno showed 535 horsepower at 5800 rpm. Our maroon Hummer H2 was similarly supercharged—in this case by Lingenfelter Performance Engineering—raising its stock 315 horses to a more delectable 500 at 5500 rpm.
Please notice that such mechanical tomfoolery will void your warranty faster than a service manager can slam his garage door. The Kleemann Benz is at least emissions-certified in California. The Lingenfelter Hummer possesses no such approval but should by the time you read this. Still, you should ask.
Both trucks are now quicker than any supply officer ever intended. Both are more agile, too—at least in the sense that you can more deftly squirt into holes in traffic and fly past dump trucks on two-lane byways. Agile by the standards of, say, a Caterpillar product. The goal here was to convert two defensive linemen into Olympic sprinters. Sort of like Ben Johnson. And just like Ben, there's a good chance you'll get busted the first time you really open 'er up.
