General Motors has reached a preliminary agreement for the sale of its Hummer brand of large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks to a machinery company in western China with ambitions to become a carmaker.
The buyer is the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company, based in Chengdu, G.M. said Tuesday. The price was not disclosed, but industry analysts had estimated that the Hummer division would sell for less than $500 million.
Onry 500 mirrion? You prenty cheap charlie! Put the money on the nightstand, sailor.
The White House welcomed the pending sale of Hummer while quickly pointing out that it had not been involved. The transaction “is good news for the 3,000 Americans who will be able to keep their jobs, the two American plants that will remain open and the more than 100 Hummer dealers that should be able to stay in business all around the country,” said Bill Burton, a presidential spokesman.
Oh fucking swell. In related news, there is great rejoicing in the Land Of The Tiny Penis'd that their compensators can still get serviced. Yeesh.
And just whom can we blame for those environmental and traffic nightmares?
It was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California who persuaded the longtime maker of Humvees, A. M. General in Mishawaka, Ind., to build a civilian version. As he recounted at a Hummer news conference in 2001, Mr. Schwarzenegger was filming the movie “Kindergarten Cop” in Oregon in 1990 when he saw a convoy of 50 Humvees drive by and decided that he had to have a civilian model of the same vehicle, which became the Hummer H1.
Apparently, anything Ah-nold gets involved with ends up as a big mistake and goes bankrupt.
Under the preliminary agreement announced on Tuesday, G.M. will initially continue to manufacture Hummers under contract for Tengzhong, which will then market them around the world. G.M. will continue making the H3 and H3T models in Shreveport, La., through the end of next year and the company said it might enter into a long-term agreement to build Hummers and important parts for Tengzhong.
Tengzhong plans to shift additional production of the H3 from a plant in South Africa to Shreveport, G.M. said.
I had no idea GM was building those monstrosities in South Africa! Fat lot I know about anything anyway.
Once considered the ultimate muscle car, the Hummer became a symbol of what was wrong with G.M. and the American auto industry — big, bulky and gas-guzzling.
'Muscle car'? Hardly. A 'muscle car' is something with a big block motor and a four on the floor and big wide rear tires that goes from 0 to 60 in one lunge in a cloud of smoke. Hummers ain't it. They're Urban Assault Vehicles, absolutely useless except for showing off and trying to intimidate other drivers.
That said, they have great potential for use in rugged backcountry. That's what sells SUVs in cities, but I'll bet maybe 1 in 10,000 of them ever claws its way up a logging cut or a sand wash for any useful purpose. There are many lighter, smaller vehicles that can do that just as well and haul as many people and as much gear.
They're damn sure a waste of resources. I'll be glad when they're gone from the scene. If the good intentions that the road to hell is paved with are really rocky and bumpy, give every Repug a Hummer to drive to his reward and we'll kill two birds with one stone.
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