Another pointless rhetorical question

What is it that people see in the Hummer? I'm seeing more and more of them rumbling around the road, and I really don't know why someone would choose to drive one. There's got to be more to it than penis envy, or overcompensation, or whatever, but I can't for the life of me see what.

I got to test drive the vehicle on which they are based - the HMMWV - for nine months, and it's an excellent vehicle designed for a very specific purpose: keeping people alive in dangerous situations while traversing difficult terrain. Being in an uparmored vehicle with a .50 caliber machine gun or a Mk-19 in the turret is terribly comforting when there are people around who really, really want to kill you. It also has some painful shortcomings: it's too cramped, has to little cargo room, is terribly noisy and uncomfortable, and vibrates like mad. It makes absolutely no sense as a general purpose vehicle. While I'm sure that the luxury Hummer addresses these points, the HMMWV is a silly starting point to design a luxury vehicle from.

I'm convinced that if someone created an expensive luxury vehicle based on a tractor cab (the front part of a tractor trailer rig), there'd be people out there fool enough to buy it. I can hear it now "But look at all the stuff I can haul if I need to." "I can see the road better." "It just makes me feel good to drive it." Or whatever silly reason there might be to drive something that impractical.

Re-reading this post, I think I'm probably wrong - it is all penis envy.