Mil-Spec Hummers - Jay Leno’s Garage

it's so much fun with you can get more than one of these things on the road you can hear that humming driving an office building little Jay Leno's Garage next to me here you see a couple of classic Hummers from the 90s you know we are big fans of Detroit Detroit has been going through a wonderful resurgence lately a lot of small businesses opening up some automotive some electronic but it's really coming back and we've done a couple of stories on Detroit and this is one of those Detroit stories these are the three guys that formed a company called milspec they're all in their 20s what they do is they take classic Hummers from the 90s and up and redo them go through them completely modern engines modern technology switch them all over to diesel let's meet - Ian Adam and Chris come on in guys thanks president's on the show it's hard to think of the word recycling and Hummers and what you do is you take these old vehicles and totally redo them get rid of the stock engine and switch to what what mo did you put in so we put a 6.6 liter Duramax diesel that you would traditionally find in like a modern-day GM heavy duty truck right so these would meet current smog emission correct even though their vehicles from the 90s now did you start with civilian model how much did you start with military what how did that work so we started out on the prototyping with Humvee trucks which is more or less the same thing as the civilian h1 just doesn't have a VIN number and it kind of lacked all the interior frills that we got it anyway Ian's actually designed the truck and he can speak you know more volumes as to what we've done exactly in the interior space yeah so basically we use a civilian truck we got the truck down to the body and the frame rails and everything else is new content from there so the interior doesn't share anything with the original h1 you know a lot of suspension geometries been revised the wheels tires the powertrain has all been designed and developed in-house so this is a business you guys have a business background yes so I mean I kind of grew up with the entrepreneurial spirit and mindset I guess I'd say and you know growing up in the Motor City and Detroit I was always a huge car guy I was always enamored with trucks especially and specifically you know that each one so I actually graduated college with an economics degree so not directly business but you know ultimately you know is it started out kind of as a passion project and you know is you know as well as I do when you're passionate about something you know you can virtually in the car space especially in the car space it's a lot easier to you know kind of trial and error and figure figure things out and what would you have at your background I actually studied economics as well so I'm a design degree okay you guys friends before this company started you all work together what's the I mean Adam and I met in college and funny enough the first time we really actually hung out alone we took his Hummer off-roading so obviously obviously experienced a few breakdowns along the way and fast forward two years and we were discussing the you know the potential of this bringing this to market and you know obviously two to three years down the road here we are you know with our first few production vehicles so how did that work did you lay out a business plan or you just restore our Hummer sell it and go hey this could be a fun business or was the idea to do this from the get-go and you just start with one and yes so we kind of started out small it was actually around the time you could pick up right with the military surplus home bees we're getting sold on government auction so I was in college at the time and figured hey you know this might actually be a good idea to you know maybe start this and start this following this dream that I've always had of kind of starting my own little micro industrial park up right so I reached out to in and I'm like hey this is what I want to do like I want to buy a couple of these trucks and put together our secret sauce and it kind of total I'm like the main things like powertrain modern technology but at the end of the day keeping the iconic heritage of what sets these vehicles apart and he immediately bought in and it was really at that point then we entered the first two years of development of R&D trying a bunch of things breaking as much stuff as we could and you know beefing it up and you know ultimately kind of putting the ultimate package together and once we did that then we started production this is we start a production roughly twelve months ago months ago okay and and ever since the start of production we've been building the launch edition trucks that you see here on the civilian H ones well it's interesting you choose the h1 because for a while these were the coolest thing out there then they went throughout the polluting giant big car get that bigger I think if you would just hated them yeah while and now we're kind of into did you do market research to say let's see we could do Broncos or we could do Tahoes that we could do the Toyota Land Cruisers or hummert's Hummers has the best you know yeah it has the same like I guess Road presence as well as that same iconic you know face to it right and obviously yeah there's a lot of people that there's a there's a very negative stigma you know involved with the Hummer h1 specifically we really wanted to change that and although yeah it does still it just does still carry that same look all the stuff that's hidden underneath you know starting with the drivetrain specifically you know it's obviously at least doubled in terms of efficiency you can see 20 miles per gallon you can run it on biodiesel it's all those little things that we were just really trying to change the perception of the Hummer in the marketplace and expanding on that too is I was really upset when when you know Hummer had stopped producing trucks and they essentially went out of business and for a while I kind of always thought that there is a gap like no one everyone's doing jeeps and Broncos and defenders and things like that and they're doing a really well I mean there's a lot of very awesome things going on in that world but you know it's just one of those things where I'm like I don't think anyone's really tried to capitalize on this in a turnkey way I mean there's guys that have beautiful restorations of are murders but they're not you know we thought of in a modern context like if they were still making the truck today so if somebody buys one of these from you they're essentially getting a 90's truck so they're not paying top price you're not paying a sales tax based on a new car price I mean every state is different every state is different so if I I this would be ortus a 95 you know how does it work do you buy the truck and then put it up for sale or do I come with you and I got like that to somebody it's all beat to crap so it can go either way so the truck behind me was a truck that we built for press purposes so we actually sourced it ourselves and built it out the truck behind you is a customer vehicle and there is a you know a discount obviously it's involved there's like a trade-in program we offer or they can bring in their truck and then eliminate that donor cost off of it so the cost of the vehicle at the only day when you know we sell a vehicle to a client someone orders one you know they're the price that they're paying is turnkey it's not like you know it's this is how much a conversion costs then you got a source your own donor vehicle I can kind of bake the cake anyway but we try to do it as wholesomely as possible so it's kind of like buying a new car any tax breaks for being in Detroit and doing it there and that kind of thing you know because it's fun to see Detroit coming back I see all these little where Iesus he burned out buildings I see little everything from making the watches to all kinds of things and that's what this is just a giant watch really is it it's the same basically the same idea and you know I say why Detroit's if you want to do Detroit because of the economic condition there well honestly like I grew up in Dearborn which is the home afford yeah and I spent majority of my childhood riding to the product development center and peeking over the walls trying to see the prototypes and as that and that like love and passion for cars grew I started getting involved in the design community and in the car restoration community I started seeing these little niche groups of people that were highly skilled but underappreciated right and I feel like Detroit has gotten a bad rap in the last 15 20 years and every since I grew up especially in the early to mid 2000s it was just a poster child of you know the recession right so we felt being car enthusiasts and and growing up you know 15 20 minutes outside of the city and going down there all the time we there's no other place that we could find not only the level of talent of the people in the city but also there's a great energy of revival and you know for craftsmanship here so we really wanted to be a part of that in automotive context so there's really no other place that we could have imagined you know building this business no I think that's great and do people think you're crazy do you get that you have that well let's get right into the vehicle now we've learned a little bit how you put it together tell us what we have here how bad was this when you got it out of a was it pretty much trashed out you yeah I mean we ultimately use our recycled trucks which is kind of cool we don't have to find the most pristine you know picturesque trucks we actually prefer to go for the ones that you know need a little bit of extra love and TLC so yeah I mean in terms of dented body panels or oxidation things like that the nice thing is we only use just the shell and the frame from the original truck so everything else is getting replaced anyways so it off it affords us you know an awesome opportunity to increase and improve the quality of everything even down to like the sheet metal work yeah we replace a lot of the original sheet metal steel no they were actually originally aluminum so they had to be lightweight right airlifting okay so fiberglass hood and then aluminum body well let's open up and take a look at the hood oh yeah now what engine did these originally come with so they came with anything from like a five seven gas motor all the way down to a know six five turbo diesel and whose motor did they use the rig it was all GM but yeah and this is GM base as well right yes correct so the ultimate goal was to keep it as GM base as possible just from a standpoint of serviceability a lot of people you know buy relatively low volume you know start whether it's a startup company or just a low volume company in general that it's very hard to get parts for so we were trying to use as many drivetrain wise as many off-the-shelf components as possible or at least engineering our products to fit in an application so that you can take it to any GM service center around the world it's a funny it's almost mimic it is some attention technically it is mid-engine the trucks an awesome weight balance um it's almost a 50/50 weight balance and it's very unique so I mean it's independent suspension and it actually has portal hubs so the axle shafts go into a portal box at the hub and then there's a gear reduction right so it's just a really cool unique design this truck as you can see he's got our air suspension on it axles and rear ends and all that stuff those are all new to or use so we use the original housings it's an AMC model 20 which is that's you know the the housing of the differential we upgrade so in the rear we actually use an ARB air locking differential in the front it is the original design differential so it's a limited-slip that also having that air locking diff in the rear allows us to run an air compressor okay so all of our trucks have on-board air ok well very cool and it's gone well you met it easy to see it's got air conditioning everything else oh yeah full blown upgraded HVAC system that we actually have two units we have a primary unit that feeds the entire you know dashboard and the front occupants and we have a secondary unit for the rear passengers who is your audience is it hunters is it rappers is it looks like every conceivable kind of you know guys it you know yeah I think crazy guys in LA all the time got to have something like this is it is it going for work or just show vehicle what do you find I mean most of our customers to this point we've only made six trucks all right I've been blue-collar business owners so it's actually great a lot of our customers use the vehicles what they're you know supposed to be used for I know our first client in Michigan takes his hunting into the you know to the shooting range and an off-road all the time some of these I'm sure will be you know garage queens in the future all right but to this point it's just been an enthusiast that wants something a little bit different and understand you know the brand and what we're trying to accomplish with this platform so is that now lighter or heavier than the original truck believe it or not it's roughly 150 pounds lighter than the original so I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what specifically we did to do that to accomplish that it kind of was just a byproduct of you know all of the ingredients in there refined right but it still got a you know seven and a half thousand pound carboy Wow yeah seven and a half thousand pounds our standard drivetrain configuration will make 500 horsepower and roughly a thousand pound feet of torque so it's about zero to sixty numbers you've gotten so far in like the low sixes high fives really so they're actually pretty quick that's pretty quick yeah and if you're buying vehicles by the pound that's probably pretty good deal with these go for so they start at 2:18 5 ok that is out the door including donor and everything the donor and again you're buying a 20 year old truck this totally upgraded and all new parts and parts warranty we offer our own warranty bumper to bumper and powertrain yeah because I see a lot of the equivalent new vehicles 150 160 so it's really and it's not kind of last as long as this thing and let's open up a little bit they're really helpful I mean even for me I've got long legs but it does yeah make it easier not entirely sure if you've had any experience in in each one with with the cab configuration it's definitely pretty unique oh it is unique very wide it's not really an intimate driving experience when you're with if you're with a significant other because you can barely reach over and touch him well I guess dad's would like that yeah halfway across exactly and I like this bullet windshield not since I think a 48 Buick have I seen this yeah and they're heated to the windshields internally heated okay which is hopeful no it's really fascinating and this this come off or no this is all this is all stationary in terms of the top so it's um so like this truck has a soft top on it's alright technically the soft tops are removable hard tops are you know fix them I see only this opens up yeah so it's like a hatchback almost you can have active I mean it's enormous what is the wheelbase on this you know I want to say it is a hundred and thirty inches okay so still not as long as the Duesenberg yeah one forty three and a half one hundred fifty three and a half a long great bike so this would be a compact car yeah I don't wanna they have a surprisingly good turning radius - yeah width wise obviously they're they're pretty wide so I think what the mirrors open like you know normal driving conditions I want to say it's a hundred and four inches wide so eight and a half feet with them folded in its a hair underneath you are and how many variations are there of the Hummer I mean like you have this one kind of roadster thing opens exactly top comes down right this is a full-on hardtop hole exactly so they're only - are there more no I want to say there's close to five that we offer so the you're seeing two of them here you offer a single cab two-door configuration so it's got an extended bed really long pickup bed and then we also offer a four-door hardtop pickup so essentially you'd be like if you took this hatchback part off and you just have a hardtop pickup truck with you no no okay yeah yeah no I think it's great what cuz I can't wait to read the comments you know cuz people now what are you doing you're taking a vehicle that somebody's going to drive anyway and making it more fuel efficient and less more emissions efficient as well so I mean that's all good it's not like it's already been manufactured so you're just remanufacturing it's not like you're making a brand new giant polluting vehicles I mean just taking something old and making it cleaner than it was so III think that's an interesting justification now it I think it's great and the fact you guys are all new 20s and you do in this company the parents say yeah me no no they're probably more worried about some of the off-roading adventures we find ourselves in inherently whether it be because of journalists or just a weakened passion so it mostly mostly supportive a little bit at first definitely was you're gonna do what with Hummer h1 so how much now a business for you know 10 years my parents were a little a little concern no I think it's great you know could we live in a society now somehow people think working at keyboard is a better job and working on Allison transmissions or something and it's it's really 61 half done you know I have so many friends that are now making really good money doing mechanical things because nobody wants to do it or interest in it and I think this is great and I'm asking you have you got a lot of interest are you surprised it you know is it more than you thought is about what you thought is it last I would say it's been more than than we thought I mean it's definitely a it's a small market right I mean no and not everyone's in the market to buy oh truck that's this big and bulky but it has kind of surprised us and especially on a global aspect that's really surprised us the interest from you know guys in the Middle East Isis calls yeah no but I mean anybody the one thing always makes me laugh about America's I like an alibi right now well it's gonna take about six months yeah I mean everybody wants you know Americans do like it I want to right now I want to get again you give me today yeah no III think it's just great what a lot of features you want to show me here well so we got anything on this one that's different Oh slightly different interior it's got a flash here alright interior with the diamond stitching no I'll let Ian actually kind of talk about some of the design philosophy that was pivotal when we were kind of reimagining and rethinking the layout of the interior yeah I mean the original truck was just a sea of vac form plastic I mean that's the 90s for you I mean but that on this scale it was just overwhelming and you can't you couldn't really cover it up with with nice materials or change a few things here and there because it just didn't really feel cohesive so we started with a blank canvas approach and really rethought the layout and everything content wise on our trucks is completely new so you've got Bluetooth audio you've got GPS gauges you've got all the fun amenities you'd find in the normal because that is a designer you're not changing the design of the vehicle really just more a lot of these kind of touches is that yeah just a lot of the stuff like you know a lot of the textures you're changing a lot of it I think the powder coating the you know the Kevlar finish the interiors is all made out of aluminum instead of plastic now right so it's it's it's more it makes you want to interact with the truck more and you're not really taking the Heritage or the original iconic design away you're just enhancing it does he come to you guys what'd you think of these swatches oh yeah I like that no I like to go no let's go back oh yeah he's come up with some crazy stuff which at first when you're looking at you're like yeah that's I don't know if that works and then it's just one of those things where at this point I just trust him like I'm gonna get a Hummer I'm gonna make it robin's egg blue eyed robin's egg blue doesn't work for me but it does work I mean it looks pretty cool I think it looks pretty cool thank you so I think that's interesting and so this is a design choice also isn't it these exact yes so we tried to we tried to really hone in on things that were already interesting about the trucks so a lot of the the lighting is all LED lighting up it's all upgraded all of these panels are all you know metal and they're powder coated and this seemed to have more of a sport wheel than that one yep yep each truck has a theme this truck is more outdoors you know sandbox oriented this truck would be more of like a urban assault and some urban assault because that's one thing Detroit does not have enough ocean assault yeah yeah you're mainly battling the potholes at that point yeah I know you know this is perfect for LA actually yeah I I've got a Dana ferret tank over there and for LA it's really the best way around yeah plus you got the machine gun and of course this top comes off yeah it's heavily insulated as well I want to say there's half an inch of foam padding on the underside of that so you get a lot of sound as well as thermal and you know a big thing for me too and we were kind of designing like a major exterior point that we wanted to incorporate it was using a coating that is scratch resistant and very like abrasion resistant right so I mean as you can see like on this mirror there's little little little scratches and whatnot from it a few times that it was off routed right and you know it's plastic obviously so you can see that the plastic is what gets nicked but the actual coding itself on the exterior you know it's about as durable as it gets now was there ever a standard shift um or were they all automatic the only standard shift Hummer I believe was the h3 platform and these use the Allison what six beat double six I mean yeah and also one thousand six feet with overdrive and then we use a manual transfer case so it's selectable you can do write too high for high for low the original trucks were essentially always four-wheel drives okay I'm a big difference to from like the old six alpha which had the Duramax Allison drivetrain in it that one had a five-speed and this one has a six-speed so you do actually end up getting an extra couple miles per gallon on the highway now what does mom say when you guys park this in the driveway when you go to visitors maybe you still live at home I don't know but is it that they kind of think it's like they're being urban assaulted or what no they love it might the first time I showed my grandma one of our trucks she was a lot she was loving out I was actually kind of surprised and that was kind of exciting to see and I mean yeah my parents I have a little a little half brother and she's two years old and he's like I want to go for ride the monster truck so whenever I'm at the parents house you know you get him on my lap and he starts it and how old you get mother she is in her 70s okay I'll she's older than me okay fine all right well can we go for a ride mister and then I think we can all fit in and can't wait yep yeah and we can get 20 miles per gallon so yeah let's go save some fuel take a bowl let's do it [Applause] [Music] rides nice you know we spent a lot of time really trying to refine on road you know refinement and ride quality I mean it's out of the day it's a Hummer so you know it's gonna be able to off-road pretty much on anything you throw at it the big thing was you know approving like steering fuel for instance we spent a lot of time trying to refine the steering making it tighter right you know not not feel like you're driving a big eight-foot wide truck as much it's kind of interesting to driving a truck with the geared hubs that these homers have because you'll notice when you're slowing down or accelerating you hear like a humming noise and it's actually the gears yeah the straight-cut gears and they in the gearboxes that was the name comes from yeah you know whose gate back into that so we actually use speed HUD speed up gauges and they're all actually through GPS base pages so you can you can run it like 0 to 60 time yeah exactly well they can't all be just speedometer and not tach not the other a lot of them are diesel related so you got like boost exhaust gas temperature and it's kind of an important thing to keep track of when you're driving a diesel truck as well as your transmission time a lot of time and effort was spent with R&D in regards to improving the cooling capacity yeah so I mean these trucks you can run them the really cool thing is you know you can run this thing at 80 miles an hour on the highway and it's cruising at like 2000 rpm so it's how many gallon tank it's twenty-five so not not enormous now a lot of same as the Ford Galaxie there yeah we good period you can get about 300 miles out of the tanks yeah yeah if you look really closely in the windshield we have heated filament that runs in the windshield so that's very nice like in the winter when you have a vertical windshield result you know you have issues like ice buildup and snow and starting getting mucked down there another big thing was now finding the right tires tires are really important right and you know it's overlooked and for me proportion is everything and I think that the original trucks had great wheel the entire size proportion in terms of like no in relation to the body what do you have on you know michelin's know so that we actually on this truck we were on knit oh I believe these are the Terra grapplers so it's actually a hybrid all-terrain and muttering it's a hybrid so it's not as aggressive as a mud train it's not you know as refined as an all-terrain tire which is nice because you get the size and you get the width and the you know the overall diameter but it's not as loud definitely outside of tried pretty much every type of off-road tire developing mist rocket I'd say by far this is my favorite map it's still perfectly aggressive but they're not loud they're made in America you know middle I believe makes these detection pretty impressive but they're big they're 38 inches 30 which is by thirteen and a half inches wide itself beefy tire you hear that humming kind of an interesting homework for another thing - I don't know I mentioned but our trucks all come biodiesel compatible they could have brought up too because it smells a lot better of a normal diesel foot smells like flowers or Fred fries SUVs the stuff oh yeah it is kind of interesting though I'm a big off-road former and honestly for for this you know market and these types of vehicles they're actually not as like that much taller then yeah for the most part I mean it fits in a normal parking garage I want to see there it's a hair above six and a half feet tall you can pretty much get it in any standard height when you go up to your doors and water with this yeah yeah it's got the snorkel so in theory I mean I wouldn't recommend it cuz you get it you know right get it pretty dirty but yeah you could easily you know take it up up to that level it's funny too they actually made everyone when they you know hear that they have snorkels they're like I'll get questions like Oh are the doors sealed like this water going to get it and you actually don't want to prevent water cat because then the truck has a tendency to wanna float right lose traction so when they were actually designing a part of the original and what is to allow it give it some ballast quiet these build down a division of General Motors or what was it it's really interesting so General Motors owned the rights to Hummer and the branding it's to my knowledge I believe that's the way it was they never actually built up in their own factories they were twenty-eight call - am jennifer and it's funny they actually built the Humvees and the civilian trucks on the same line and then they roll off and the civilian ones would go one way to get the VIN number stamped on Eire and then the military marks ago they built a lot of military once-daily they only made 12,000 or so stability in front I want to say over the course of the 80s and 90s when they started building these things the Humvees at least they made upwards of a hundred and 150 thousand so they weren't all for the United States you know they'd send them off to our allies like France or Germany right [Music] and figure out how to not make anything rattle no screech yeah squeaks around we can make it obstacle when building these things I'd say them the margin of error it seemed like when we were going through the plank let me go through the bodies they're all just a little different so the tolerances are always different like for instance I can't you know tool up in a sense to build like a bunch of dashboards and things because if we thought we got it precisely right we did install it on a one truck and it would fit and complete different rocket wouldn't water so it's kind of riding this fine line of balance of hand fitting everything and then kind of disassembly and then you know reassembling it it is pretty cool though like that the kinds of looks you different maybe 25% of the time you get someone to give you the stick I write but like a lot of the times people are just throwing thumbs up and like you know they're all about it and I won't say this psychic is funny like California is so I do have some of the most hardcore 4x4 truck enthusiasts and we always have some of the other but exactly then you get the opposite side of the spectrum you get the green you know all my for an electrified zero-emission which is it it's great it is pretty cool to see that I've asked in terms of what you remembered what you've experienced so far like how is this differ well it's unique driving experience yeah you know that's what that's what the website is all about I remember driving one of these and realizing it does it sounds too let's say it shrinks around you but I don't feel intimidated driving I don't feel it it by crushing things on both sides of the road without really nice I'm sure it's better than stock it's been a long time since I'd open so simply got more power than oh yeah now we come up with the name bill spec military spec those are pretty straightforward the hardest parts about starting a company something I was so passionate about it's like I got to get the name right well I think it's great I mean I realized I'm old and all from you guys put together and that a and it's great to see young guys like yourself starting a company it's not a company it's not just designing websites you know thank you I mean I like people that make something through then that product goes out into the world and somebody has to make tires and somebody has to make transmissions and somebody and you know and it keeps the whole workforce going you know this idea of just doing something virtually I like having things in reality it's really inspiring diseases fuzzy retired guys 250-260 to start doing this panic you guys you got the Ahmadiyya you got this you got the optimism and you're starting a business and time to get business now it's just unbelievable I can't imagine the rules and regulations environmental stuff and they also congratulate adamant this thank you guys thank you thank you for having us it's an honor to press the pleasure night it's fun show young people doing car stuff thank you yeah it's really great sincerely maybe we'll have a few more opportunities in the future some other cool stuff that yeah you got it in the Indiana cool products let us know come on oh yeah anyway see you guys next week start a business and stop watching that place [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,139,831

Rating: 4.8406811 out of 5

Keywords: Hummer, H1, Detroit, Mil-Spec, restomod, 4X4, offroad, off-road, adventure vehicle, Duramax, Diesel, heavy duty, military, turbo, trucks, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: IGpvexNxmks

Length: 34min 51sec (2091 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/VIIIMan]

That is dope. If I had the scratch, I'd totally have one done by these guys.