Arnold Schwarzenegger is the reason Military Humvee trucks are now road-legal
Published on Jun 21, 2025 at 5:25 AM (UTC+4)
by Jack Marsh
Last updated on Jun 18, 2025 at 9:20 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
If you’ve ever owned a Humvee or seen one on the road in all of its glory, you’ve got Arnold Schwarzenegger to thank for birthing the Hummer H1 decades ago.
Since its conception back in 1985, the Humvee has served countless American veterans.
But in 1992, the Hummer was created as a road-legal spin-off of the military-only trucks.
That only happened by the single demand of one man: Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken a liking to bigger cars, having grown up in post-war Europe before moving over to the United States at the age of 21 in 1968.
The celebrity-turned-governor started his collection with a small and comical BMW, but soon got back into his larger military-grade vehicles again.
Back in 1990, Arnold Schwarzenegger featured as an undercover cop posing as a school teacher in Kindergarten Cop, where he saw a fleet of Humvee trucks rolling past the Oregon set.
After the filming had wrapped up, Arnie was adamant that he wanted one of the vehicles for himself and wrote to AM General.
After a lot of convincing, the Humvee providers birthed a Hummer made specifically for the bicep-heavy actor.
Two years later, AM General began selling the first road-legal Humvee trucks to the public, with the creation of the Hummer H1.
All because of Arnie’s obsession.
In an excerpt in his unauthorized biography Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his agent Lou Pitts said: “He just went ape for that machine.”
“I mean, it was big, it was unique, and it was something that was larger than him.”
Nowadays, Hummer has pivoted from the military trucks into the SUV game, serving as a hip-hop icon and a Cybertruck rival.
Funnily enough, this isn’t the only car that was created on the demands of Arnie.
No doubt that Mercedes wanted to move into the EV division with its signature SUVs, but it came ten years after Schwarzenegger had commissioned the first-ever electric G-Wagen from tuning company Kreisel.
Coincidentally – or not, depending on your conspiracist itch – the 2025 G-Wagen EV was built on Arnie’s homeland doorstep in Austria…
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