G.M. said Friday that it expected to stop building the H1, flagship of its Hummer line, next month. The move comes 14 years after it first went on sale to the public…The wide, rugged Jeep-like vehicle captivated many television viewers, who watched it trek across the Iraqi desert during the Gulf War. Hoping to capitalize on Humvee-mania, its maker, A.M. General, quickly brought out a street-legal version.
Despite its $140,000-plus price tag, rough ride and a fuel economy rating of about 10 miles a gallon, well-heeled buyers and celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger snapped up the H1 when it first reached the market in 1992.
Perhaps because there are more choices of Hummers, or because H1’s moment of military chic simply has passed because of the conflict overseas, sales of the H1 have plummeted.
G.M., which sold 875 H1’s in 2000, sold just 374 in 2005, and 98 in the first four months of 2006, according to Autodata…And with G.M. on a push to recast its image as a green company, “it’s time for it to go away,” Mr. Pinelli said of the biggest Hummer.
Overdue.
I doubt the military aspect had anything to do with its demise. It was too big, too hard to park and too expensive. Most want something alittle more luxourous for that kind of money.
WELL,
Back to the OLD jeep format…
OR, maybe an alcohol version..??
Hummer = Jeep-alike?
The original Jeep was a sleek, usable car. (c.f.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JeepVWM.jpg) without any frills.
The Hummer is a piece of engineering shit. Suits perfectly to Schwarzenegger and other brainless.
Hmm … now what will the tree-huggers have to complain about? I guess there’s always the H2 … That aside, long overdue … SUVs are, 90% of the time, frivolous wastes of money and resources.
Bruce IV
Do you actually like living in shit? Ever live next to a smoke stack or a steel mill?
I have – you become a “tree hugger” real fast.
“Hmm … now what will the tree-huggers have to complain about?”??? That is such an ignorant attitude towards the Earth’s problems. Don’t you know about the ozone layer hole? Don’t you know about the global warmth problem? Don’t you know about the nuclear waste problems? For crying out loud, as Sounds The Alarm said, do you like to live in shit?
If you put a frog in an uncovered pan full of cold water and start heating it, the frog will do nothing and boil to death. If you put another frog in a pan full of already boiling water, it will jump immediately and survive. People who dismiss environmental problems are the frog and it happens because no matter how serious problems have become they get worse steadily, yet slowly.
Maybe, just maybe we’ll survive the environmental problems our parents created and the ones we are creating ourselves. Our sons will have much lower chances. If you have kids, do you really love them?
You know, Miguel, you raise a cogent point. The nay-sayers — who usually call themselves conservatives of one flavor or another — are like religious types whose heads are stuck in their bible. As much as they prate about independent thought, they function as if they believe “Daddy” is worth trusting — “Daddy” is keeping everything safe for everyone.
In the legal world, “Daddy” is the government.
Con-babble requires disclaimers about the size of government, the number of governmental functions. When push comes to shove though — the first entity they trust is the government.
Those are the last people I would trust. They have a vested interest in the status quo, in not making waves — and as the last 10 years or so of corruption and cronyism in Kongress have shown — in self-gain from our legal system.
OK. Now we have posters. Anti-war arguments are looking more and more like WWII Nazi propaganda.
Think about it, first of all, without oil our whole economy is in the tank and we would likely to face another depression with over 50% unemployment and lots of us standing in bread lines. Secondly, dictators like Sadam would continue making war on his neighbors, inflicting genocied on his citizens and harboring terrorists.
Finally, our throops deserve better than to be called murderers. Lets not attack them. If we want change, lets vote!
Jim Petersen
It depends on the tree hugger. I prefer one that knows what he’s doing than some idiot who’s one a romantic crusade and ends up screwing nature.
Some of the biggest disasters are usually started on good intentions.
#8, Moss, Thanks! Unfortunately the world is full of people like those. I call them intellectually dishonest.
#9, MisterRustic. “You have to suggest solutions that don’t entail unreasonable sacrifice.”. It would be fair enough to consider as an ‘unreasonable sacrifice’ to drive a small call instead of having a thilthy planet if it were only yours. It would be up to you. But, hey buddy, it is my planet too!!!!! So I have to breathe poluted air so you can keep on driving your lorry. What a nice sense of humanity!
#10, First, the problem is not the lack of oil, but the dependency of it. If we really wanted we could get rid of the need for oil with some very worthwhile effort. The hydrogen car can become a reality. Biodiesel is less poluting than crude, so can be used, not as a perfect solution, but a better one. You came up with lots of booggies. Let me add a real one: Oil lobby! As for Saddam, I fail to understand if that is a naive stance or a one of those intentionally intellectually dishonest ones. Oh, comeone, you don’t really care for Saddam’s victims and use them only as an excuse. Finally, it didn’t seem to me that the poster is calling the troops murderers. On the contrary it seems to say the the troops are being forced to do the country’s dirty work so poor people who are not willing to commit to “unreasonable sacrifices” may roll happilly down the highway in their fuel unnefficient trucks. If is in defense of the troops, not against them.
#11, Yes, there are tree huggers with hidden agendas as well. But can you give an example of a disaster that began as a good intention?
Ok, i must apologize for using the term “tree-huggers” I was (attempting) to make a joke, and it was apparently in very bad taste … but read the rest of my post please. Unless your job requires you to roll through uncleared land, you most likely do not need an SUV. Anyone who has one (unneccesarily) is putting a burden on the rest of the world. Yes, I know the environment is going to pot – my area just had the mildest winter on record … everyone knows its global warming, and its not right. As to moss’s arguments (#8) religious people (at least Christians) do not put enough effort into lobbying for environmental causes (read, no effort), and they should, as we are commanded to be stewards of the earth, and to maintain it. I’d love to see people on Judgement Day saying “Umm … good you came back,God, cause we kinda trashed your planet … can you fix it now?” I think however that the reason that environmental causes are not fought for among the church is that they’re too busy with moral issues, and a lot of the same people they oppose morally are the same people who are doing the most work to save the environment. We cannot go on as we’ve been going, if everyone acted like us here in NA the world’s resources would be swiftly exhausted. This problem needs money and attention, because, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and it can be fixed.
#9, Living in a word of small cars and mass transit is living in shit. If you can’t drive a truck on a freeway for hours at a time whenever you want there’s no reason to live in the first place.
How would you like to go? Real quick with a gun on your mouth or slower with a large handful of pills and some Jack Daniel’s. Shoot, I’ll even buy you the bullet.
Even though I do not currently own an SUV (or any other car) I am so tired of hearing that SUV’s are the cause of high gas prices, all pollution, planters warts etc.
Is a soccer mom who burns 20 gallons of fuel a week driving her kids to school and grocery shopping evil when compared to the “enviromentalist” who burns 40 gallons a week in his Civic so he can live 60 miles away from were he works?
If we are going to attack people who waste gasoline why not start with recreational boaters? These people can burn 100 gallons of fuel in one day for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. At least Hummer drivers are going somewhere.
Harrison Ford made a big statement a year or so ago by arriving at some big awards show in a Prius. Wow! Harrison Ford also owns a jet powered helicopter which burns more fuel in an afternoon of joyriding than the family SUV can “waste” in a year. I assume that Mr. Ford also owns several large homes around the world, all of them kept air conditioned, heated, pools kept warm, lawns mowed just in case he should show up.
My point is that Harrison Ford is the cause of all of our energy problems.
Of course, there are enviromentalists who go way too far – the kind who are like “Trees are the most important things on earth – we should never cut one down again and just build around them” (I was exagerating there, but you get the idea … I’d call them tree-huggers completely unapologetically) There is a balance – yes, the world needs to be taken care of, but the world is here for man’s use, not man for the world’s preservation.