H2 Oh!

Motoring editor ALAISTAIR SLOANE tells how a Hummer grille is turning into a humdinger court case for General Motors.

The item appeared in the Good Oil. It said: "DaimlerChrysler is taking General Motors to court for 'appropriating one of the world's most recognisable automobile features' - Jeep's seven-slotted signature grille.

"DaimlerChrysler claims that the grille in GM's new Hummer H2 so closely resembles that of the Jeep Cherokee that buyers could confuse the Hummer with a Jeep product.

"It says an independent study backs up its claim. Shown photographs of the Hummer H2, two-thirds of all Cherokee owners surveyed incorrectly associated it with a DaimlerChrysler vehicle."

That was a few months ago and the lawsuit - seeking damages and to stop GM from using the grille design - has since become bogged down. The judge has yet to set a trial date and venue. He has to decide between the Hummer's home of South Bend, Indiana, Jeep's headquarters in Toledo, Ohio, or Detroit where the ruckus began.

Meantime, GM is pressing ahead with plans to begin selling the smaller four-wheel-drive Hummer H2 in the United States next year.

It showed off the H2 at the New York Motor Show and last week hired muscleman movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger to head a parade of H2 models through New York's Times Square.

The promotion was seen as a declaration of war by Jeep maker DaimlerChrysler, who reportedly wanted to avoid legal action in the first place and even designed alternative grilles for GM's consideration. GM rejected the designs.

The Hummer H2 is a smaller and user-friendlier version of the original Humvee, the military model built by AM General Corporation and made popular as a go-anywhere vehicle by the 1991 Gulf War. Humvee is an abbreviation for High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle.

The exposure the Humvee received during the Desert Storm war prompted AM General to sell a civvy-street model. It was basically just stripped of military hardware and became known as the Hummer.

It was as popular on Hollywood's Rodeo Drive as it was in action-adventure films. John Travolta drove one. So did Bruce Willis. Schwarzenegger has owned seven. There are a handful in New Zealand. About 150,000 have been built.

Now GM, which bought the brand from AM General in 1999, wants to boost production and to broaden the range.

It is talking about smaller versions, the H3 and H4. The H2 has a wheelbase similar to that of the Jeep Grand Cherokee. It is expected to come with a choice of petrol and diesel engines and more driver-friendly bells and whistles - but it will retain the rough-and-tumble strength of the original military model.

There are no plans to build right-hand-drive versions of the H2.

DaimlerChrysler, meantime, is promoting its latest Jeep concept, an off-roader it says would be considerably cheaper and have more widespread market appeal than the Hummer H2. The Jeep can be tailored to customers' requirements: hard-top or soft-top, bigger or smaller wheels, two-door or four-door, and so on.

The growth of lifestyle models - lightweight and heavyweight all-wheel-drives - will soon result in one major international carmaker using a suspension system called Kinetic, developed 10 years ago in West Australia.

It is the brainchild of university lecturer Chris Heyring, who converted a Toyota Hilux to Kinetic and showed it off at a four-wheel-drive show in Perth, where it made light work of the worst terrain.

Heyring sold Kinetic for about $65 million in 1999 to American component-maker Tenneco. It is rumoured that the Kinetic system will be a feature on a special off-road product from DaimlerChrysler within 12 months.

The system is a development of the passive-reactive hydraulic suspension used in the original Citroen DS. Heyring used hydraulics in his prototype Hilux but later adopted an hydraulic-spring hybrid.

The difference between Heyring's idea and the hydraulic or air suspension systems used by luxury off-road makers is the absence of electronics.

Hydraulic or air-based systems use sensors and pumps to flush fluid around the system to where it is needed. This is how a viscous coupling works.

But the Kinetic system allows the fluid and the vehicle to find its own level, a process similar to Citroen hydraulics.

When the DS went over a bump, the hydraulics moved against a diaphragm which compressed a gas which in turn provided a springing effect. When the wheel returned to level ground the gas returned to its uncompressed state.

The Kinetic system goes further and connects the front wheel diagonally to the opposite-side rear wheel. The result is that one wheel isn't hanging in the air while the other grabs the ground. In short, the Kinetic system allows greater axle articulation than conventional vehicles.

Heyring has said that two-wheel-drive vehicles equipped with the Kinetic system can outperform conventionally sprung vehicles in four-wheel-drive. "If you can keep the two driving wheels on the ground at all times you don't need four-wheel-drive."