If you test drive it, let me know how you like it. I have been a Jeep fan for as long as I have been driving (just after the model T it feels like).

Hummer has a LOT more room. Unfortunatly I am not in the correct tax bracket to be able to buy a Hummer. One of these days....

Thanks for the look. Glad you like it.

You'd better hurry up. The Hummer H1 is being phased out by General Motors.

"There is nothing so frightening as ignorance in action."

A trailer is a great idea. You can even leave it packed if you have a good secure place to store it. I would like to have one like in your pic, perfect size!
As for a vehicle for your needs, you could get a used something as a wilderness thrasher. I bought an Isuzu Trooper with lots of space, decent off road performance and sort of expendable. It does not get the best of milage on the highway though. About 20 MPG tops.
As for bugging out of PHX, I doubt any of us will get far in a crisis. It took 2 hours to get 20 miles on I-17 last night and that was without any accidents to tie things up. Just the usual on a Sunday night heading back to the city. Imagine if everyone were trying to leave the city at the same time, you would not get anywhere except stuck in your vehicle. A good plane would be really handy to own!! A Beaver would be perfect. Maybe someday I will be rich:)

That I like! I also like the Toyota FJ Cruiser except for the stupid Sub-woofer in the back end! You have to wonder who they are targeting with that bling piece of #mU&,<! If you rip out the subwoofer, it would be a decent utility ride!

Here's a do-it-yourself alternative:
http://www.4x4bodies.com/

Excuse my ignorance, but why would you want a 4x4 as a bug-out vehicle? My daily use vehicle is my bug-out car: a 1997 Ford T-bird.

I can carry everything I need, and can pull a nicely filled trailer. Road speed seems to be more important than off-road capability IMHO.

Range will be most important and good highway milage won't help much when your stuck in the stop and go traffic jams while trying to bug out. Most cars, while having great highway milage don't get much better stop and go milage than a 4x4 and usually have smaller gas tanks.
You may need to hop a curve or drive onto the median to get around an accident or stalled/out of gas vehilce. You also may be involved in minor fender benders as road rage goes to an all time high and you want a frame based vehilce instead of a unibody for those situations.
Past history shows that bugging out means you will be sitting in traffic for a long time, you want a good sized fuel tank and good battery and starter so you can shut off the engine and sit for a while and a vehilce that can idle for long periods of time. Getting stuck for hours on I70 in the middle of summer when the PA road departmnet decided to shut down a lane out front wheel drive minivan would slowly overheat even without running the A/C. My 4x4 truck I can sit with the A/C on full blast for as long as I have fuel with no problems overheating.

I think the mentality behind a 4x4 is sound. To counter your roadspeed argument, not only can today's 4x4 vehicles reach standard highway speeds they often also have 2H and A4WD (2 wheel and automatic 4x4). On top of that, I've seen Katrina and numerous earthquake and hurricane newscasts where massive interstate traffic jams are the norm. That's even with all lanes going outbound during the emergency.

Having a 4x4 to take you on roads less traveled in order to bypass some of that exiting traffic is a great Idea. I don't know that I would want to haul a trailer on really nasty backroads, but it might be possible. In that case I think I'd also want a PTO for real off-road work. In a worst case scenario, should you need to abandon a trailer (on or off road), you'll be able to transfer far more intp a 4x4 SUV type vehicle.

Anyway, your T-Bird might be nice for cruising down the road. I just hope you vacate the area before the highway slows to a crawl. I guess it all boils down to utility and planning. If you have your exit strategy planned and have multiple eventualities covered then you may not need the utility of 4x4. I drive my Chevy Trailblazer pretty much daily and it's a nice ride. I've taken it offroad, but it's not really hardened for rock climbing or anything like that. Still, it has no problems in muddy unpaved terrain.

To each his own, and I'll go with the extra options that 4x4 bring me.

And even 4x4 isn't necessary, I've taken a 2wd furthur off road than what 99% of 4x4 owners ever do but having 4x4 is like having a fire extinguisher or BOB or PSK, its another piece of gear to have when needed. And modern 4x4's it doesn't give any negatives, the mpg difference between a 4x4 and 2wd truck is maybe .5mpg highway and there isn't really any more maintenance like there was years ago (opponents of 4wd will list mpg and maintenance ans negatives).
The thing that hurt my 2wd truck was not having a low range so when I was offroad it was geared too high.
Though what I said above applies to "part time 4wd systems" there are now many different variations of full time 4wd and AWD that do hurt the milage and cause extra maintenance, for example my v8 powered full size truck gets better gas milage than the v6 AWD tire eating minivan we made the mistake of buying.