The World's Biggest Car Has An Apartment Built-In

Petrolheads take enormous pride in their rides. They'll buff every inch of them to a fine shine, and when they purchase a new accessory for their beloved auto, they'll often delight in telling everyone who'll listen all about it. A new dash cam or set of heated seat covers are absolutely things worth boasting about, but nothing will turn heads quite like the Hummer H1 X3, the biggest Hummer in the world. U.S. drivers are well known for their national taste in larger vehicles. The seemingly eternal popularity of the Ford F-Series, as well as SUVs like the iconic Jeep Wrangler, makes this abundantly clear. Even if you think there's no such thing as too big, though, you'll eventually agree that a line has to be drawn somewhere. The H1 X3, which has room for the equivalent of a whole apartment inside, is truly a wonder of the auto world.

This enormous vehicle is almost 20 feet wide and over 21.5 feet tall. It's not just about sheer size, though, but the remarkable way it's employed. Even the most over-prepared of road-trippers wouldn't be able to take their whole apartment with them, but the X3 takes a motorhome-esque approach to its interior and then expands it to the extreme. It has a lounge that's around 645 square feet, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Needless to say, this isn't a regular production build. It was designed for and is owned by Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, the auto-loving "Rainbow Sheikh." The Sheik is known for his extraordinary and unusual car collection, some of which can be seen at the Emirates National Auto Museum. In terms of sheer shock value and intimidation factor, though, there's really nothing that touches the X3.

The Hummer H1, not to be confused with a military Humvee, is quite the beast itself. That makes the simple fact that the X3 is designed to be three times its size (hence the name) all the more extraordinary. It's difficult to even picture a model that large, but for those who are privileged enough to enter this vehicle, you'll find that the doors on it are actually too large to open and are simply decorative. As demonstrated by this clip from the video below, the way to enter is by raising a ladder from beneath the center of this behemoth:

Given the colossal size of the vehicle, you might expect it to be more of a non-functional showpiece, but surprisingly, it's actually drivable. As with everything else about it, though, it's unconventional to drive. For one thing, it has a top speed of just 19 mph, which isn't exactly supercar performance. Still, it's astonishing that it's drivable at all, considering its sheer size. In order to get it moving, it has a quartet of LARC-LX engines, and they can be individually controlled by the driver.

The Rainbow Sheikh's wealth is almost unimaginable. His family, Abu Dhabi's House of Nahyan, is the richest royal family in the world, with a collective net worth above $300 billion. You could certainly forgive him, then, for being more than a little extra when it comes to indulging his passion for the motor vehicle. To his credit, he's been creative with it. At these levels of mega-rich, even the most stunning of supercars are probably quite easily accessible, and therefore unexciting. How many people have enormous, wonderfully impractical Hummers like this? Just one.

As we've seen, there's no bigger Hummer on the planet than the H1 X3. Considering that it's two stories tall, that's not so difficult to believe. It has a very strong case for being the world's biggest car overall, but there's an interesting caveat to that: It isn't actually the longest. At about 46 feet long, it really takes some beating, but there's a certain patriotic limo that's more than twice its length. As Guinness World Records reports, the longest car in the world is The American Dream. As of March 2022, it measured a brilliantly ludicrous 100 feet 1.5 inches. This is slightly longer than the original model, having been through an extensive restoration from its original 1980s completion. It was constructed from six Cadillac Eldorados, giving a total weight of approximately 25,000 pounds.

Technically, neither car is 'bigger' than the other, as the American Dream is far longer than the H1 X3, and boasts 26 wheels, while the Hummer has just four, albeit enormous, wheels and is incredibly tall and wide. There's no need to compete in terms of flashy extras, either, as impressive as The American Dream's functional helipad is. It just depends on how you look at it. What we can say for sure, though, is that they're both wonderful, extremely impressive vehicles, some of the biggest ever made one way or the other. They're also probably about equal when it comes to the awkwardness of trying to find somewhere to park them.