Hummer to die slow, pathetic death

GM’s Hummer, the gas-guzzling, tree hugger-crushing SUV symbol of the go-go 90s and the terrible oughts, will be shut down after a plan to sell it to the Chinese fell through:

General Motors said Wednesday that it was shutting down Hummer, the brand of big sport-utility vehicles that became synonymous with the term “gas guzzler,” after a deal to sell it to a Chinese manufacturer fell apart, The New York Times’s Nick Bunkley reports from Detroit.

G.M. said only that its planned sale of Hummer to the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machines Company “cannot be completed,” without giving a reason, but the $150 million deal had been stalled as the companies awaited approval from the Chinese government. G.M. had been trying to sell Hummer for a year, and struck a preliminary deal with Tengzhong last June.

How ironic that in the end, even the Chinese didn’t want to buy a Hummer anymore.

It wasn’t always this way in Santa Clarita. Just two years ago, we had a Hummer dealership, complete with a simulated mountain path that helped Parkway Hummer sell middled aged SCV men on the Tonka-truck-as-lifestyle-accessory ideal.

But two years and one gas crisis later, the Parkway Hummer dealership is no more. They now sell Volkswagen.

I remember going to a model open house in West Ridge about three years ago. Times were so phat that if we put down some cash to buy a house, we’d get the black Hummer in the driveway for free. Of course the house was priced at > $2 million, and no amount of ARM-twisting could convince us that we could afford it, so I lost my only chance to drive a Hummer.

And that is how I took to riding my bicycle.

If there was any justice in the automotive world, GM would have kept Saturn alive and ended Hummer a long time ago.