WHAT'S NEXT FOR HUMMER?
What Should GM Do?
It's been rumored for a few days, and now it has been all but confirmed----General Motors has suspended operations on the Hummer brand, and has hired a business broker to engineer a sale of the division. True, Hummer sales have plummeted in recent months, particularly the H2, but we have to wonder if GM isn't pulling the plug on Hummer a bit prematurely.
Now we can see a business case for, say, discontinuing the gas-gorging H2 in North America for the short term (sell 'em in the Middle East instead; they'll fly like hotcakes off the showroom floor) while keeping the H3 and in-the-works H4 in the product pipeline. Besides allowing GM to maintain a strong presence in the off-road market segment, the H3 gets halfway decent mileage, and the downsized H4 promised to be even better, both desirable qualities given the imminent tightening of CAFE standards in 2010. But selling off the entire division? We can think of a lot of GM dealers who ain't gonna be real happy with that decision.
Okay, if you ran the show at GM, what would you do with the Hummer brand?
* Kill it. The Hummer concept was always a bad joke anyway
* Sell it. Then reinvest the money into making GM's existing truck line-up more fuel-efficient
* Keep most of it. Discontinue the H2 in North America but keep the H3 and H4 for CAFE requirements
* Rebadge it. Build a truly capable H3-type rig to replace the crappy TrailBlazer/Envoy SUV
* Keep all of it. Gas prices will stabilize eventually, and GM needs a presence in the off-road 4x4 segment
* Who cares? Ya shoulda bought a Suzuki when y'all had a chance