Hummer Dinger

"Twelve yards long, two lanes wide,
sixty-five tons of American pride!
Canyonero! Canyonero!"^note The Federal Highway Commission has ruled the Canyonero unsafe for highway or city driving.

Homer: What kind of mileage does it get?
Rainer Wolfcastle: 1 highway, 0 city.

— The Simpsons

A gigantic sport-utility vehicle, built under the philosophy that Bigger Is Better.

Named for the Hummer brand, itself a derivative of the Humvee military vehicle, a Hummer Dinger is massive, boxy, unattractive, and incredibly fuel-inefficient. It makes other cars tremble in its wake, either from fear or from being so heavy it shakes the road. It'll have a bold, authoritative, powerful name, often invoking travel and rugged wilderness — odds are good it's named after a famous mountain somewhere. It's filled with all sorts of equipment for all sorts of jobs, from climbing mountains to towing trailers, and it's equipped for rain, snow, sleet, hail, mud, and whatever else Mother Nature can throw at it.

And yet it will almost never be used in these conditions. This is because the driver of your typical Hummer Dinger falls into one of these categories:

• A man in a midlife crisis who's Compensating for Something. Instead of the high-performance sports car, he went even manlier and got one of these. Expect him to find out the hard way that he can't park it anywhere.
• A tiny woman in Suburbia wanting to feel "safe", who uses it for mundane applications like hauling groceries or shuttling her kids to soccer practice; the woman often tends to be an Obnoxious Entitled Housewife. When said kids grow up and start learning to drive, they'll learn on the Hummer Dinger, and they'll either struggle to control it or go Drunk with Power and end up depositing it into a building.
• A celebrity looking to flaunt his wealth, usually someone who wants to be seen as exceedingly masculine like an arrogant pro athlete, an action movie star, or a rap musician. They'll usually turn it into a Pimped-Out Car in the process.
• A Mexican cartel boss, having found a unique application for a foreign product — in this case, as an attack vehicle. Hummer Dingers are ideal for comfortably seating lots of cartel goons, their extensive ordnance, and their "product".

It's important that a Hummer Dinger not actually be used for difficult driving conditions. This is not an SUV that actually sees use in tough terrain or weather. This is a suburban status symbol, whose driver is almost always Compensating for Something. As such, those drivers are usually Acceptable Targets; they're seen as having wasted their money trying to look cool and manly. There's often also a Green Aesop thrown in there, as Hummer Dingers are notorious gas guzzlers.

This is considered an American trope since most other countries don't have such pervasive suburbs. Where population density is higher and streets are narrower (especially someplace like Japan or Europe), a Hummer Dinger would be seen as obscenely impractical. But there are equivalents in other places, like the British "Chelsea Tractor" (usually a Range Rover or alternatively, in recent years, a Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon), the Australian "Toorak Tractor" (named after a wealthy Melbourne suburb), and the Brazilian "luxury pickup", which is actually a pickup truck but achieves the same effect down there.

The actual Hummer brand was a Briefer Than They Think phenomenon of the mid-2000s. By the late 2000s and early 2010s, twin energy and economic crises led to such big cars falling out in favor of more energy-efficient cars, particularly once hybrids and electric cars became a thing. The Hummer brand ended up as a casualty of the Great Recession, meeting its temporary demise in 2009, and when General Motors rebooted it in 2020, they made it electric. That said, once enough time had passed, the idea of an oversized "off-road" mall crawler made a comeback in the late '10s in the form of luxury pickup trucks. The Analysis page goes into more detail on the phenomenon.

See also Rice Burner (smaller cars with useless enhancements) and Absurdly-Long Limousine, both of which reflect equally poorly on the owner. If you combine any of them with a Hummer Dinger, well, God help you.^note Do an internet search for "Stretch Hummer Limo". Just do it. Compare the Mommy Mobile for other vehicles that are stereotypically portrayed as uncool suburbanite family haulers.

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Examples:

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.
• A PSA was once made comparing these giant SUVs to wild animals to educate owners of said vehicles to be careful when driving them.
• Another of the small-SUV companies (the Honda CR-V?) ran an ad where a couple were able to get very close to deer in their smaller vehicle before a brute in a 'regular' SUV came crashing in and scared the animals away.
• This Snickers commercial featuring a man showing off his giant SUV to his neighbors. Comes in two colors: gunmetal and black, has an HD TV and surround sound. Cue the SUV crashing into the garage that is clearly too small. 32 airbags!!!

Comic Books

• The Transformers: Animated tie-in comic The Arrival gives us the Bulkhead in Issue 4. It is an APC sold as a civilian vehicle with bad fuel economy, several mechanical issues, and unapproved use of the Autobots' resident Big Guy's name because he didn't have a copyright on his likeness.
• Kayko & Kokosh: Szkoła Latania ("Flying School") has a rare European example predating the Trope Namer itself — after getting his Flying Broomstick license, Mirmił decides that he's too important for normal broomsticks and opts for a massive wooden crate. It's oversized, impractical, and uses absurd amount of the setting's stand-in for petrol, to the point that it crashes mid-return-flight because Mirmił couldn't afford enough fuel.

Films — Animated

• A pimped-out Hummer makes an appearance at "Sarge's SUV Boot Camp" at the end of Cars. When ordered to drop and give Sarge twenty (miles), he complains about dirt getting in his rims, making it obvious that he's never been off-road.
• Over the Hedge had the antagonist driving around in one, while simultaneously talking on her cell phone and drinking coffee. As RJ explains when he introduces the forest animals to suburbia, "Humans ride in them because they are slowly losing their ability to walk."
  Lou: How many humans fit in there?
  RJ: Usually? Just one.
• Lampshaded by its absence in Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo; Raven finds projectile cars are less effective in Japan, where most people drive compacts.
  Where's a gas-guzzler when you need it?

Films — Live-Action

• In Krampus, Uncle Howard drives a Hummer that he's named Lucinda. It is so big that the house rattles as he pulls into the driveway, highlighting his and his family's Conspicuous Consumption and letting the Engels know that they have arrived for Christmas dinner well before they ring the doorbell. We later see that Howard has installed a gun rack in the tailgate. Krampus trashes the Hummer in the course of attacking Howard and Tom, the point at which the protagonists realize that there's a monster stalking them.
• Lampooned in RoboCop (1987) with an advert for the "6000 S.U.X." that's briefly seen on a TV screen. It's an enormous sedan that gets a whopping 8.2 mpg. Concepts for the cars had it using a jet engine—an even more hilariously inefficient engine.
• The Treer Saltair in Southland Tales is a unique example, a green SUV powered by the Big Bad's alternative energy source. Given that said alternative energy source is destroying the fabric of reality, though, it's arguably even worse for the Earth than a Hummer. One (in)famous scene featured two of these vehicles conjoining.
• While it is technically used in snowy weather in Unaccompanied Minors, the kid's father, normally an environmentally conscious man, is forced to use a Hummer to travel. It runs out of gas only minutes after being refilled and gets him into more trouble on his winter drive.
• Who Killed the Electric Car?: In a documentary about the ill-fated EV1, the Trope Namer is a rather obvious suspect since GM was more interested in building gas-guzzlers like the Hummer than vehicles with low-emissions. What was more glaring was how the US government was giving business owners tens of thousands of dollars in tax deductions to people who were buying a Hummer, while giving people who bought a clean car only a few thousand^note  Though one shouldn't discount the teething problems GM was having with the EV1, chief among them heavy, inefficient batteries, low range and poor performance, and lack of trained technicians. On the other hand, that didn't exactly warrant issuing a full recall, banning them from driving, and destroying every car they could get their hands on..

Literature

• A Dave Barry column noted that as the SUVs get bigger, in case the owner suddenly remembered they had to pick up a herd of bison on the way home, their cellphones get smaller, leading to a future where smaller vehicles are trapped in the SUV's wheels by gravity, but their pleas go unheard due to the owner whacking at the side of his head to dislodge the rice grain-sized phone from his ear.
• In Clear and Present Danger, one of the Columbian drug lords drives a monster truck. It's actually a practical purchase for him, because one of his fellow cartel chieftains lives on a mountaintop villa with terrible road access, and the truck is just about the only vehicle short of a helicopter capable of safely getting up there. Clark uses it to cover the true nature of the first RECIPROCITY attack: since you really could hide half a ton of military-grade explosives in that truck without noticeably impacting the handling, it provides an excellent cover for the laser-guided bomb that gets dropped on it.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Thomas Raith, Idle Rich extraordinaire (well, he does have a day job at this point, but it's at an upscale hair salon so it doesn't count) gets a monstrous white Hummer in Small Favor which Harry promptly half-wrecks. Harry's slightly put out that it's not the military model with bulletproof windows when people start shooting at him, although he does admit that heated leather seats are very comfortable.
  • In the novella Backup, narrated by Thomas, Harry's brother defends his purchase, pointing out that not only is it huge and ostentatious, perfectly fitting his cover identity as a flamboyant high-class hairstylist, it's also one of the toughest vehicles available on the civilian market. With as many enemies as Harry and Thomas have, such a combination of disguise and protection is exactly what they need.
    Thomas: Entire sections of houses could fall on it without causing it more than minor inconvenience, as could giant demon insects, and before you ask, I know it from experience.
• 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 Traders one of the investment banker characters lands a huge deal and gets a promotion and a big raise. Showing off, he buys a Hummer and drives it to work the next day. Unfortunately, he cannot find parking for such a big vehicle in downtown Toronto. This causes him to be late for work and miss a key meeting with an important client. He loses his promotion and raise and barely avoids getting fired. He promptly returns the Hummer to the dealership.
• Done in Better Call Saul when Daniel Warmold, a rookie drug dealer, gets in way over his head and uses his new drug money to buy a pimped-out yellow Hummer with red flames on the side, spinning rims, and a Vanity License Plate "PLAYUH". Naturally, Nacho Varga chooses to rip him off as a result, stealing Daniel's money and baseball cards. Because Daniel goes to the police about the cards, Mike is forced to broker a deal with Nacho to keep themselves from getting caught, wherein Nacho gets Daniel's Hummer in exchange for returning the baseball cards. Upon receiving the car, Nacho announces his immediate intentions to destroy the car for parts:
  Nacho: You think I'd be caught dead driving that thing? It looks like a school bus for six-year-old pimps.
• The Boys (2019). After making a We Care video promoting environmental causes, Deep is shown driving a gas-guzzling Hummer.
• The Catherine Tate Show's "Posh People" sketches had Tate's character driving a luxury SUV as a sign of her Upper-Class Twit nature. One sketch has her and the other rich parents all driving identical silver BMW X5s, while another has her forced to drive a Toyota hatchback rental after taking her Land Rover Voyager in for service.
  Tate's son: There's no DVD in the back seat!
  Tate's daughter: And there's no bull bar on the front! What if we have to go off-road or to Highgate village?
  Tate: It's a death trap!
• The Hummers that were Horatio and company's signature vehicles on CSI: Miami. (The other two use SUVs, but slightly smaller and less glaring than the Hummers: Chevy Tahoes and GMC Denalis on CSI, and Chevy Avalanches on CSI: NY.)
• Frasier: Frasier's neighbor and Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Cam Winston drives a Hummer, and considering that he's a condo-dwelling Camp Straight stuffed shirt like Frasier, the Hummer has likely never so much as touched a surface that isn't paved. The vehicle irritates Frasier to no end since Cam's parking space is right next to his and takes up so much space that Frasier has to crawl out the passenger side of his BMW.
  Cam: You do your share of polluting with that substitute for masculinity you're driving.
  Frasier: If mine's a substitute for masculinity, then what is yours?
  Cam: Bigger!
• The Monstrosity of How I Met Your Mother, which has 4000 horsepower and gets 0.05 miles to the gallon. It has a smaller variation, the Monstrosity Sport, which has 3999 horsepower and gets 0.06 MPG. "Mon-stro-si-ty, 'cause global warming isn't real!"
• Similarly, one of the cars used in NCIS: Los Angeles is a Dodge Challenger. While the car itself isn't an example of this trope, it's used when the team is undercover and wants to project the image of someone who would drive a Hummer Dinger.
• Parks and Recreation: Corrupt Politician and all-around Jerkass Councilman Jamm owns a bright yellow Hummer H1.
• 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.
• Top Gear (UK) frequently invokes this when talking about SUVs, especially ones like the BMW X5 and the Range Rover. Oddly enough, Jeremy Clarkson actually enjoyed the huge and unwieldy Hummer H2 for its charm, claiming that driving it made him feel like a seven-year-old boy and defending his love of it to Richard Hammond and James May, despite hating the H1 which is more capable off-road.
• Occurs in season eleven of Trailer Park Boys. Between seasons, Julian bought a lifted Jeep Wrangler four-door, which Bubbles calls a "G.I. Joe car". Ricky later has a brake failure while driving to the junkyard and hits a lifted heavy-duty Dodge Ram, complete with transport truck-like smokestacks in place of a regular exhaust. Bubbles calls it a "hobbit truck" since the drivers are usually rather short. Sure enough, two very short men get out to assess the damage (Ricky's car is virtually undamaged, but theirs has a large dent in the rear fender).

Music

• The song "To Buy A Car" by Jel:
  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
• The political satire group Capitol Steps has a song called "God Bless My SUV", a parody of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A."
  And I'm proud to be an American who gets just 5 MPG
  Though I live alone, the car I own could seat a hundred three
  And I'll gladly park so close to you, when you pull out, you can't see
  No, I'll never trade my Escalade! God bless my SUV!
• The song "90 Pound Suburban Housewife" by Rozanne Gates and Suzanne Sheridan, which first gained national exposure after being featured on Car Talk, is about a woman driving one of these and causing chaos in her wake.
  With tons of steel and 4 big wheels
  She'll be drivin' like an S.O.B.!
• The B-52s' song "Love Shack" includes the lyrics, "Hop in my Chrysler / It's as big as a whale / And it's about to set sail!" and "I got me a car / It seats about twenty!" Although it must be said that the rest of the lyrics imply that the lead singer is at least putting its vast seating capacity to good use. (No, not that way.)
• "La Suburban Dorada" by Los Huracanes del Norte is a Mexican narco-folk song about two cartel goons running a drug delivery with an armored, tuned, golden Chevrolet Suburban. The first half of the song talks entirely about the Suburban; the second half talks about the job going awry at a police checkpoint.
  They felt well protected in the golden Suburban
  Its engine was tricked out and it was completely armored
  Arturo proudly said: "not even the Devil can catch us"

Newspaper Comics

• A Bloom County strip poked fun at the consumer feeding frenzy when gasoline (briefly) dipped to sixty-nine cents a gallon back in the 1990s:
  Man: Louise? How shamefully low is the gas mileage on our new Chrysler LeBehemoth? 6 mpg?
  Wife: 3.9
  Man: Hah! I'll drive to Peru! At 90 mph! With lots of sudden starts and stops! It's still cheap!!
• FoxTrot has a storyline where Roger goes 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 Earth.
• Over the Hedge has a strip, later incorporated into the movie, in which Hammy asks how many humans can fit into a vehicle so huge. RJ's response: "One."

Stand-Up Comedy

• Jeff Dunham has a bit in Spark of Insanity about his family having two cars: A Hummer H1 and — on the other end of the spectrum — a powder blue Prius. He keeps the Hummer to maintain his sense of masculinity but stopped driving it after it cost well over $100 to fill it up.
  Jeff: I pushed the vehicle home and said, "Girls, look at our new front-yard ornament! Get in the Prius."
• Hari Kondabolu has a bit about seeing someone with a hybrid Hummer and wondering why anyone would do that.
• Denis Leary's "I'm an Asshole" has a segment where he talks about getting one of these that gets a mile a gallon.

Video Games

• Averted for some reason in the MMO Drift City. Early on in the storyline, you're given a mission to drive an SUV around a long winding, hilly section of road spanning around the perimeter of the starting city. The game claims that SUVs are better for climbing up the steep hills because they have more power. Truth is, any car can drive up a hill just as easily as any SUV due to the game's mechanics. SUVs themselves generally have a higher "Toughness" stat, which has a small impact (no pun intended) on how much damage you do to enemies when you collide with them. How often you need to refuel your car depends on the tier of the car you're driving, not the type, which means that SUVs last just as long as every other car in the same tier, only they don't drive nearly as fast. Also, all the cars in the game have their Serial Numbers Filed Off, unless they're from the Chrysler corporation or its subsidiaries Dodge and Jeep. For example, the "Comet" is a Mitsubishi Eclipse under a fictional name. One of the end-game SUVs is based on the Hummer H3, and actually is one of the most powerful vehicles in the game, even able to compete with other end-game cars.
• In the rather silly FMV game Corpse Killer, your stereotypical Jamaican sidekick repeatedly informs you of his desire to buy a Hummer. One sidequest has the two of you looking for pirate treasure so he can buy one.
• As befitting his status as The Big Guy of the Bandicoot family, Crunch Bandicoot drives such vehicles in Crash Tag Team Racing, with names such as the "Guzzler" and the "Overcompensator".
• The titular character in Duke Nukem Forever gets to drive a monster truck at one point, which quickly and conveniently runs out of fuel at set moments. Duke even quips about it getting good mileage.
• Mentioned in Forza Motorsport 4's Autovista mode, when Jeremy Clarkson talks about the Hummer H1 Alpha, describing how it can drive through 20 inch deep flooded roads perfectly fine, then noting that it is not something generally encountered on the way to the gym.
  • Zigzagged with the Cadillac Escalade ESV in Horizon onwards, which is expectedly a lumbering giant in its stock configuration, but can become a full-on Lightning Bruiser with the right upgrades.
• Ghost Recon Wildlands averts this trope with its SUVs, including the Escalade ESV/EXT and Hummer H1 expies, which handle reasonably well both on and off road.
• Featured several times in the Grand Theft Auto series.
  • Parodied in Grand Theft Auto III with radio ads for the "Maibatsu Monstrosity", an SUV that can seat 12, cross rivers ("so far I've only hit a few puddles. But it's good to know it's there!") and arctic tundra. And only gets 3 miles per gallon.
  • 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 Patriot 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 Humvee (the military vehicle on which Hummer is based on). Therefore, it was primarily used as a military vehicle, and even the civilian version featured in Grand Theft Auto III was one of the best off-road vehicles in the game.
  • Lampshaded in IV, which has a "Player Image" stat that 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".
  • GTA V tears into this trope with Bravado Motors, an all-American automaker that just got bailed out by the government... and went on to keep making the same gas-guzzling SUVs and muscle cars that put them in that situation in the first place, because that's the American Way.
    "Together, we're holding onto the dream. And that dream is luxury, and a gas-guzzling luxury car, created in a nation that's 95% condemned. We haven't forgotten what America wants: a hunk of overpriced shit that goes fast and gets you vapid pussy."

  One of Bravado's ads markets the Bison pickup truck, which has 6,000 horsepower and gets fuel economy of 3 MPG in the city and 5 on the highway. The ad is filled with macho posturing and Patriotic Fervor saying that the Bison is the truck of The Wild West. The Bison is player-drivable, but as expected, it's far from being the titan that its ads make it out to be, with an engine power somewhere in the 300-400 hp range.

• In Mercenaries II: World In Flames, a mechanic mentions a new enormous monster of an engine she's working on. It has unbelievably fast acceleration and speed... Unfortunately, it eats up 200 gallons per mile.
• The Saints Row games have a giant diesel pickup truck called the Compensator. It's got sluggish acceleration and steering, a low top speed, and the durability of soggy toast. A Hummer H1 Alpha expy called the Bulldog also appears, and is mostly driven in wealthy suburbia, though it is a very effective vehicle because of its durability, and it's used in significant numbers in the Third (where it's based on H2) by the Luchadores and, with a mounted turret, the Steelport National Guard.
• The Koopa Chase, Bowser's car in Super Mario 3D World manages to be this despite being a one-man convertible, because Bowser himself is so big and because the car is weaponized.
• Averted with the SUVs in Test Drive Unlimited 2 where their whole purpose is for off-road racing that the Classic or Asphalt classes struggle to grip dirt roads. Although via wrecks, you can find dedicated off-roaders such as a V8 buggy or a Lancia Stratos rally car.
• The X3: Terran Conflict mod, Xtended, has the Mani luxury yacht, a very capable pocket warship with a withering amount of firepower and endurance. The ship's description then goes on to say how it's impractical, inefficient, and is used almost exclusively as a status symbol by wealthy Terrans. True to the old Hummer, it is horribly inefficient and gobbles up energy cells at a phenomenal rate when jumping between jump gates, and is cumbersome to handle when fighting enemies at close range. It became an official ship in the game's Expansion Pack, where it is a potent ship for launching Boarding Party operations.

Web Original

• One half of the Trope Namer is a (now-dead) website 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.
  • Thankfully, it's still accessible via the Web Archives. Given that the original site went offline around the same time as the Hummer was discontinued, it's quite possible that it was a case of "our work here is done".
• Sonic in Sonic Zombie has a Hummer which, for reasons other than the obvious "he's Sonic", he doesn't need.
  Sonic (singing): douching through the snow, driving my Hummer, which I don't even need because I'm only a single guy.
• In his review of the car, Doug DeMuro argues that the 1998 Lincoln Navigator is the Trope Codifier. While SUVs aimed at the luxury market certainly existed before then, with the Jeep Grand Wagoneer acting as the Trope Maker, and the Range Rover and Lexus LX serving as other examples from the 1990s, all of those vehicles were still sold as off-roaders first, with the luxurious traits coming secondary. The Lincoln Navigator was the first car that made zero pretensions about its off-roading ability, and instead directly marketed itself as a suburb crawler for large families. Its success caused other companies to Follow the Leader in its wake, and even later iterations of the Range Rover and Lexus LX would evolve to become pure luxury vehicles.
• City Nerd: The "Why the Growing Share of Large Vehicles is Bad for Everyone" points out a number of statistics on why the increasing size of vehicles is dangerous for anyone outside of one, and costs the buyer more in depreciation and fuel.
• In the CollegeHumor sketch "If the Other Party Wins", the scenario that would happen (according to Democrats) if the Republicans won the Presidential election includes a little girl who is taken to school in a Hummer instead of a school bus (because of looser environmental laws and regulations). She mentions that she missed the Hummer that morning.
• Emogame 2 featured a boss fight against Tim Allen driving a Hummer in the parking garage of the Mall of America, complete with a mounted machine gun and a Boorish Eagleland rant from Allen about how his truck and his lifestyle are worth more than the environment.
• In Kevin & Kell, one of these is driven by a flea. It's lampshaded.

Western Animation

• Stan's big black SUV from American Dad!. One episode from 2010 even parodied the changing car market. Francine is telling the family to cut back on expenses because the economy has caused the family to lose all its savings in the market. Roger tells Francine that Stan spends over $400 a day fueling his SUV, so Francine demands that Stan trade it in for a hybrid. Stan refuses because he's "A big man who needs a big SUV so everyone will know how big he is". The rest of the episode focuses on Stan trying to come up with the money to keep his SUV, only to end up deeper and deeper in debt.
• The second 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. Meanwhile, Tucker is completely enamored by the vehicle's big shiny rims.
• Family Guy:
  • The episode "Hell Comes to Quahog" features Peter buying Meg a literal tank as her first car. It gets impounded after Peter accidentally runs Joe over while teaching Meg how to drive. Stewie and Brian later use the tank to destroy the Predatory Business that's wrecking the town's economy. A Cutaway Gag also has a man driving a Hummer H2 causing chaos on the highway while watching Madagascar on its entertainment system, while thanking Donald Rumsfeld for the cheap gas.
  • In another episode, Brian's Prius is in the shop and he lets the mechanic bait him into renting "your manliest car." The result: a massive hummer with a radio that exclusively plays "Lick It Up" by KISS.
• Subverted in one episode of King of the Hill where Hank is looking at trading in his old pickup truck for a new one. Hank, the old curmudgeon that he is, dismisses the flashy bells and whistles of his new truck as an example of this trope, only to find them incredibly useful when he has to save Bobby.
  • In another episode where they go to Montana to visit Peggy's mom, Hank's only choice at the rental is a Range Rover rather than the truck he wants.
• Mission Hill: An unmade episode has Andy and Jim combatting owners of large SUVs. The first one they encounter is seen parked in an underground lot in several handicap spots. When they look inside, they see a small child in a playpen in the cargo area.
• Happens twice in Robot Chicken:
  • First, the Nerd is shopping for a car, mentions he has a very small penis, and is immediately shown an SUV.
  • A second example is a parody of MTV's Cribs with Richie Rich, in which he shows off his hybrid: Half-limousine, half-monster-truck! It drives about ten feet before emptying its fuel tank.
• Parodied multiple times on The Simpsons .
  • The episodes "The Last Temptation of Krust" and "Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'" feature the Canyonero, an SUV so big, powerful, and important that it can't let its commercial be cut short, to the point that it literally pushes the 20th Century Fox logo out of the way and burns through an American flag. It also has a reputation for unexplained fires, which are a matter for the courts. It provides the page image, and the truck's commercial jingle makes up the image caption. The latter episode centers around Homer purchasing one, but when he finds that his is an "F-series" model, which means that it's female-oriented (it has a lipstick holder built in instead of a lighter), he proceeds to give it to Marge, which causes her to develop some serious road rage. It's Marge's car in The Simpsons Hit & Run. (Note that "twelve yards long, two lanes wide" makes it larger than the biggest functional tank ever constructed.)
    Lyrics: Can you name the truck with four-wheel drive, smells like a steak and seats thirty-five. Canyonero! <whip crack> Canyonero! (The Federal Highway Commission has ruled the Canyonero unsafe for highway or city driving.)
  • In another episode, Rainer Wolfcastle talks about his enormous Hummer with Homer, providing the page quote.
  • The episode "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" has the Homer, a ridiculously garish, overpriced monstrosity built to Homer's...unique specifications, which winds up bankrupting his half-brother Herb's auto company. It's a parody of both this trope and of the Edsel, a notorious flop of an automobile from the late '50s.
  • Another episode has Homer and Marge getting stuck behind several SUVs, but fortunately, there's a gentle curve up ahead, which causes all of them to roll off the road in flames.

Real Life

• The Apocalypse 6x6 is a line of absurdly expensive custom-built giant trucks that barely makes a claim of going off-road, instead focusing on the racing-grade horsepower under the hood, built as visual derivatives of regular trucks such as Jeep Wranglers, Dodge Rams or Ford Broncos.
• Eccentric Billionaire Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan (also known as the "Rainbow Sheikh"), part of the UAE's royal family, and a noted lover of motor vehicles and extremely Conspicuous Consumption, seemingly felt that the Hummer H1 wasn't anywhere near big enough. So he built the Hummer X3, so called because it's three times the size of the original Hummer Dinger, on a 100-ton military vehicle chassis. Such a vehicle is more for show than anything else, with its top speed of 19mph.

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