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As most everyone knows, the Humvee took the place of 5 families of vehicles.
151, Dodge 880, CUCV's, deuce and others. At the original conception of the
Humvee, it was highly touted and thought to be the future workhorse of the
military. (pretty much is) The military wants to use mostly diesel engines
because when you only use one kind of fuel, the savings are phenomenal. One
of the major specs of the Hummer is that it had to have a "commercially
available" diesel engine. Ford and Dodge were not really in that market at
that time. GM has been building Detroit Diesels "since time began", so they
already had a foothold in that market. (Ya know, you'd think they would
have had better sense when they introduced those sorry converted 350 gas
engines-this poisoned the diesel market and it still has not fully recovered
from that escapade and put diesel engines years behind ESP when the market
was ready for them then)
One of the greatest vehicles in the military system was the CUCV. It was
not just a good/great vehicle, it was one that made good sense. It had
ride, (something mil-veh's ARE always lacking) good economy and
performance. Only if they soundproofed them a little more! It cost about
one forth of what a Hummer cost-something they should look at again. Now,
since they have phased out most of the CUCV's, the gov't has realized that
there is still a need for them. The folks at GM are still vying for that
market and they introduced the CUCV II. The CUCV II is not really a "ground
up" CUCV as the originals were but a off the shelf Chevy that is sent back
to GM's rebuilding shop for military conversion. The original CUCV II's
were available with the 6.5 diesel engines but as Chevy ceased manufacturing
these diesels in early 1998, they resulted only available in gasoline
models. GM has their gov't contract sales and so the CUCV II is available
but at a price tag of around $33,000. I called them through one of their
contacts seeing if I could buy one for myself. After all, it would be kind
of neat to have a nice new military diesel one! Well guess what, diesels
are non-existent and they really wanted to sell 100 at a time, NOT just one
to me! Most of these have already been sold to the Air Force as they don't
prefer the Hummer around air strips. Also there is no one particular CUCV
II design. You choose what kind of interior or options you need. Air
condition too! Maybe when the new 6.6 GM Duramax Diesel is introduced late
this year, a ground-up CUCV may be in the future!
Your information nut, Julian Burke
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Apr 04 2000 - 21:57:16 PDT