General Motors sets May 1 deadline to sell Hummer

Automotive News is reporting that General Motors has set a May 1st deadline to sell Hummer, after failing to sell it to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery.

Looking back at the past decade in motoring: Part 2

In the first part of this series, we looked through some of the worlds most exotic cars, and how they battled it out in a showdown for the most speed last decade. Now though, it’s time to take things down a notch and talk about some Chinese automakers fighting their way into the big automotive world.

General Motors announces wind down of Hummer

General Motors has announced that they will be winding down the Hummer brand, as they could not complete a deal with Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery.

Hummer Planning H4 and H5

Hummer is being sold to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, and they are making plans for an H4 and H5.

The sale hasn’t yet been finalized though, but the deal is that they will pay $150 million (Which seems like very little for an automotive company to me, but Hummer does only have 2 models, so maybe that’s why) and get most of the intellectual property for Hummer. GM will provide contract manufacturing for current Hummer products until the contract ends, at which point it will be up to the Chinese to work out how to manufacturer the Hummers.

Hummer is working with Austrian consulting firm AVL to determine their future. The idea is to make the brand focus on smaller, lighter, more eco-friendly vehicles, so there will be an H4, which will be smaller than the H3, and an even tinier H5. The H4 will be based on the HX concept car (Pictured at the beginning of this article).

So they’re trying to pretty much reinvent Hummer. Their current image is associated with gas-guzzling monsters, and the Chinese want to focus on eco-friendly vehicles. They’ll be putting a lot of money into changing this image, but I’ll miss the old image, that’s what I like about Hummer. They had the guts to go out there and give an image of gas-guzzling monsters in a time when Greenpeace is telling us all to get into a Prius. I wonder if this new image will mean that they’ll have to axe the enormous H2. That would be even worse, possibly the final nail in the coffin.

Source: Jalopnik