(vient du site www.topgear.com)
Hasta la vista, Hummer
And no, before you ask, it definitely won't be back. Hey, what's wrong with your eyes?
Oil companies of the world, weep into your panda-skin hankies because the Hummer H1 is dead. After 14 years as the most conspicuous symbol of Americans' foolish fixation with SUVs that can comfortably crush anything up to and including downtown Chicago, the world's dumbest 4x4 has been killed off.
When last year's sales total dropped below the 400 mark, even George W could have done the maths - America didn't want the H1 any more. Least of all Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man who first persuaded Am General that a hulking piece of military hardware might be turned into a splendid way for civilians to get to the mall.
Turns out that the Governator of California has become an unexpected greenie, kicking off his '06 re-election campaign by making pro-environment speeches and driving around in a battle bus covered in pictures of trees. With gas prices rising fast and Arnie suddenly pre-occupied by clean air and leaves, the H1 was sunk.
And unless you have shares in an XXL garage-door maker, that's an entirely good thing because the Hummer H1 was complete, unadulterated, super-sized crap.
'When last year's sales total dropped below the 400 mark, even George W could have done the maths'
Even the military version, which remains in production, was badly designed. Or at least, the ones that led the invasion of Iraq were, chiefly because the armour plating between the top of the door and the edge of the roof was made from a well-known bullet repellent called 'fresh air'.
The civvy version was more useless, being too huge even for vast American roads and yet inexplicably tiny on the inside. It was crass, arrogant, crude and blessed with the mechanical refinement of a cement mixer full of snooker balls.
It was the star of lousy movies and the preferred transport of lousy stars. Chris Eubank had one, for Christ's sake.
It was a lazy, lumpen, nasty waste of too much space that just gave Jonathan Porritt and his American equivalents a bloody great stick with which to beat the car in general.
But not any more because at last the Hummer H1 has gone. And good riddance.