This Is What Happens When A Hummer H2 Skips More Than A Few Leg Days

The Russian Youtube channel Garage 54 has come up with a more cost-effective way of slamming a Hummer. The lifestyle SUV is not popular (or sold) in the communist country. But in the United States, Hummers can be found wearing a myriad of ridiculously large rims and veneer-thin tyres. Garage 54 brings some of that street cred back home, but on a budget.

The Hummer H2 you see here is wearing the most ubiquitous wheels you’ll find in Russia: those from a Lada sedan. These are likely 5Jx13 rims, which seem to be shod with 175/70 R13 tyres. Compare that with the stock Hummer H2 which comes with 315/70 tyres on 17-inch rims.

That is a difference in diameter of about 11.2 inches. Just by changing the wheels, Garage 54 has taken 5.6 inches off the H2’s ground clearance. This Hummer is perched merely 104mm off the ground, held in place by the lug nut conversion from hell.

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So how did they accomplish this? First, the crew took the stock wheel off the Hummer and traced its hub and lug nut placement onto a piece of cardboard. Next, they took the steel wheel from a Lada and cut a bigger hole in the middle using a plasma cutter to remove its four-lug centre. Then they cut the wheel from the centre outward in a U-shape where each of the eight H2 lug nuts would be placed. After some hammering to straighten out the lips, they installed it on the SUV with washers at each lug nut.

Once all four wheels were in place, a quick spray of gold paint was applied and the H2 was ready for business. The crew drove it a bit on the smooth floor of the garage to make sure the wheels would stay in place and not fly off the hub. Slamming a car using proper airbag suspension makes sense if you’re driving on the smooth highways of California. In the melting April snow and pockmarked streets of Russia, it’s a bag of anxiety.

Not for long, though. Once out of the garage, the wheels hold up without incident. The host drives through waterlogged potholes, flicking snow in every direction. At one point, one rear wheel loses traction and spins out. The driver switches on the differential lock and the Hummer H2 drives forth with confidence.

This wheel ‘upgrade’ is anything but normal. For one, it makes the military-inspired urban utility H2 look like it’s been amputated at the knees. We shudder at the thought of this car attempting a corner on a paved road, given that it’s a 3,000kg SUV held up by four contact patches each the size of a human palm.

The host clarifies, and so must we, that this conversion isn’t safe by any measure. If the car hits a pothole at speed on an asphalt road, the steel lips around the lug nuts can slip and the rim would immediately be ripped off the hub. If it happens at the front, the H2 could lose a brake rotor or two. At the rear, it could cause the differential to impact the ground and break, rendering the three-ton SUV immobile.

And yet this H2 looks adorable. It’s a salt-of-the-earth project based on an SUV which is often associated with aggressive materialism. It’s a laugh riot for the quarantine -- a build you can do at home. For Garage 54’s sake, don’t.