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The day Sean McAdam bought his silver 1996 Hummer was the day he saw every semblance of roadway civility dissipate faster than carbon from his tailpipe.

Overnight, the sedate commute around his home became a gauntlet of choice words and evocative gestures.

"Not a day went by that I didn't get the finger," says Mr. McAdam, president of VeggieDiesel, an Ottawa firm that develops biodiesel filling stations. "I had people spit on it. I had people in Subarus yelling horrible things at me."

In North America, few symbols of conspicuous consumption rival the Hummer for pure universal loathing.

Ever since the military troop carrier first dusted itself off for civilian use in 1992 - instantly becoming the ride of choice for stars as varied as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gary Coleman - it has been the bane of environmentalists for its bulk and thirsty powertrain.

Now, that popular sentiment is taking on a militant tenor. Toward the end of July, German police fielded more than 80 reports of Hummers having their tires deflated.

Around the same time, vandals ruined a brand new H2 belonging to a 32-year-old marketer in Washington - smashing the windows, slashing the tires, and scratching "for the enviro" into the paint, according to the Washington Post.

Canadian Hummer drivers say they face this fury on a daily basis.

"You have no idea," says Mr. McAdam, who owned two biodiesel-powered Hummers, but has since given up the highway behemoths. "A routine drive could be quite an experience."

Last month, Ronnie DeRisio, a hotel director from Niagara Falls, Ont., took his girlfriend on what they thought would be a leisurely road trip to Ithaca, N.Y.

Idling his 3-year-old H2 through the college town, Mr. DeRisio came to an abrupt stop.

"A hippie guy and girl were crossing the street in front of my vehicle when the guy pulled down his pants and mooned me in the middle of the street," says Mr. DeRisio, who ignored the young man until he doffed his trousers once more.

"The second time I slammed the gas pedal down and chased him down the sidewalk with my truck," Mr. DeRisio says.

"He ran so fast it was like the doors just opened at a Grateful Dead concert and he had general admission seats. I slowed down and let him catch his breath, and rolled down the window and explained to him the next time he did something like that he would be eating granola bars through a straw."

Website owner Sam Moorcroft and his wife were loading groceries into their fully loaded, $100,000 H2 last summer when an older man drove by, slowly brandishing a middle finger out his driver's side window.

"I look at this guy and he starts yelling 'small penis, small penis, small penis' over and over," says Mr. Moorcraft, whose second car is a Honda Civic Hybrid. "This guy looked like he was in his 70s. Why would he do that?"

More recently, Mr. Moorcraft found a note on his windshield.

"You shouldn't be driving," it read. "You should be walking, cycling or public transit."

Mr. Moorcraft was incensed. "I live out in the boonies. Transit isn't an option out here."

The Hummer's environmental stigma has cut into sales. When General Motors of Canada Ltd. took over the Hummer brand and introduced the H2 in 2002, dealers could barely keep them in stock.

"We were selling 25 or 30 a month back then," says Tom Lariviere, a salesman at Dueck GM, a Vancouver dealership that sells the full Hummer line. "Now it's more like two or three."

Hummer enthusiasts insist their hulking trucks don't deserve their whipping-boy

status.

Their cars, they say, are no harder on the environment than most other trucks and SUVs spewing carbon dioxide into the air.

"These people are so totally uninformed," says Stephanie Mulder, who lives in the Northwest Territories and feels her H2 is a necessity on the region's icy roads.

"I drive a Ford Excursion for work and that thing makes the Hummer look like an economy car."

The H2 gets about 5 kilometres per litre, according to owners of the truck, which is equipped with a mileage computer.

That's comparable to other large SUVs, such as the Cadillac Escalade and the Ford Expedition, and even smaller luxury cars produced by Bentley, Mercedes Benz and Ferrari.

Jim Conley, a sociology professor at Trent University and co-editor of a forthcoming book on car culture, suspects the vitriol reserved for the Hummer is a size thing. "The original ones took up a whole lane and just loomed over everything else. They have this bully-like symbolism."

Several Internet sites have only stoked the moral outrage directed at the Hummer.

On FUH2.com, visitors post pictures of themselves flipping the bird to H2s. The site has collected over 4,300 shots. The Sierra Club sponsors Hummerdinger.com, a satiric news site that pokes fun at Hummers and the people who drive them.

Stephen Hazell, executive director of Sierra Club of Canada, says that dozens of other cars and trucks may burn just as much fuel as the Hummer, but its "militaristic ethos" is what's given the truck a black eye.

"They're designed to intimidate," Mr. Hazell says. "If you're in a tank battalion in Iraq, a Hummer makes sense. Driving it around a major city doesn't."

That line of reasoning doesn't mollify Dennis Bilyk of Leduc, Alta., whose Hummer was keyed down to the metal last month; or Matthew Paul of Windsor, Ont., whose Hummer was filled with sand while he was at the beach with his kids; or Cliff Antone of London, Ont., whose Hummer was keyed one month after he bought it.

"Most of these incidents involve groups," Mr. Bilyk says. "Idiocy reaches critical mass and fuels off itself."