Hummer H3 Sno-Cat at the Nurburgring

Extreme sports don't do it for us. You know, the kind of thing that has more to do with looking cool than actual sport, like parachuting out of an airplane and skydiving with a snowboard strapped to your feet. Carving the atmosphere? It's silly.

But now we find ourselves challenging everything we hold sacred about motorsport.

Karl Geiger calls us from Geiger Cars in Munich and asks if we'd like to do some test-driving at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. It's February and we look out the window and see snow drifting across the street. Then he says we're going to be driving a Hummer H3.

It sounds like something you'd see at the X Games.

Doing the Sno-Cat Thing
Geiger Cars makes its way by offering Germans the opportunity to drive the American cars of their dreams, something that you'd think would be pretty unlikely until you realize how many Harley-Davidson motorcycles are cruising the streets of this country. And now Karl Geiger has equipped a Hummer H3 Alpha with snow treads, so it looks like those Sno-Cats you see at ski resorts.

So there you have it: fresh powder, rubber bands instead of tires and the 'Ring. We might just be responsible for starting one of those fashion sports.

As we drive into the heart of the Eifel Mountains, the legendary slopes are slumbering peacefully under the snow. Three feet of the newly fallen white stuff are on the track itself and the guard at the entrance to the Nordschleife doesn't think the idea of driving today is a good idea, opening the door to his shack just long enough to hear who we are and then grumbling, "Don't get stuck."

Actually we're not sure who we'd call first if we did, a tow truck or mountain rescue?

Not Something You See Every Day
So what is this motorized lobster in front of us? It's a standard-spec 2010 Hummer H3 Alpha with a 305-horsepower 5.3-liter V8 connected to a four-speed automatic transmission.

What happens under the fenders is far from standard, however. The cast-aluminum wheels are gone and in their place is the Mattracks 88M1-AT, a strange coalition of wheels, gears and rubber tracks. Race rubber this is not, but as Geiger reminds us, today they will indeed allow us to carve a fine line through the snow and keep the baby Hummer from getting stuck.

The steering is both heavy and extremely vague; you end up merely suggesting which way you'd like to go.

This is seriously impressive hardware. In conditions that would make even a hard-core off-roader slip-slide away, the tracks transmit every last bit of engine torque to the ground. Not surprising, really, as the total contact patch being deployed here comes to almost 26 square feet. Each track is 15.7 inches wide and 59 inches long. Add to this the rubber blades that pass for tread and the difference between these things and conventional off-road tires makes us think of the difference between hiking boots and stilettos.

For all the traction afforded by the snow tracks, there is one pretty major downside, and this is that the steering is utterly ruined. In fact it gets worse the faster you go. It's both very heavy and extremely vague, which is not a good combination. You end up merely suggesting which way you'd like to go and then letting the tracks decide how they're going to go about it all by themselves. Meanwhile, the rear tracks are pushing you forward more than is perhaps useful and you end up driving the Hummer H3 like the biggest snowmobile ever built.

This fun doesn't come cheap. Geiger offers this system for any all-wheel-drive car, with prices beginning at $10,600. This particular setup for the Hummer H3 represents $32,300, so it's not cheap. It's also not street-legal, although Geiger says it will be soon.

A New Track Record
Plenty of cars have set out on the Nürburgring intending to set a new track record, but never in February, we'll bet.

Hatzenbach, Hocheichen, Flugplatz — we know the famous corner combinations at the old Nordschleife. We know them at breakneck race speeds while surrounded by other cars. But it's a lot different in a total white-out at 40 mph. It's distinctly strange, though not exactly a White Hell, the equivalent of the tree-lined Green Hell that F1 driver Jackie Stewart so famously called this place in the early 1970s before guardrails were installed.

There is some evidence of other track users. First the footprints of some animal beside the road, maybe deer or wild boar, shivering no doubt in its winter coat. Later at Fuchsröhre we run across the tracks of that other winter animal, the cross-country skier — probably about 180 pounds and covered in some exotic derivative of polyvinyl chloride would be our guess from the depth of the tracks.

Metzgesfeld flies by and we come across the cross-country skiers, who look pretty comprehensively stunned by a Hummer H3 on snow tracks. Shortly after Kallenhard, there is some road construction going on, so a sign tells us to slow to 20 mph. We lift off slightly and rumble past the workers building a sound-proof wall at Breidscheid. They stare as if a UFO had just landed in the parking lot of their local Lidl discount supermarket.

We keep thinking that this is all very pleasant but surely something has to go wrong.

A Test of Manly Driving
At about the 8-mile point, trouble finally arrives. We're trying to negotiate the Karussell, where you dive down into the banked, concrete-lined ditch beside the road. We drop in, floor the throttle and then skip straight back out of the top and spin like a bar of soap zipping out of a sink. Well, there's no damage done aside from the Hummer being thoroughly dusted with snow.

Finally we cross the finish line at Döttinger Hohe and stop the unofficial timer. Today's 13 miles have taken about three-quarters of an hour to complete. It's a personal best, of sorts anyway.

And it's possibly been the best fun we've had at the Nürburgring since we came here for the first time as a youngster. Please do make sure you tell as many sports brands and energy drink makers about the new sport that you first heard about here: Nordic Schleifing!

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