When Milwaukee car dealer John Bergstrom had a grand opening for the first Hummer dealership in 2002, then-General Motors Corp. chief executive Rick Wagoner cut the ribbon.
The dealership featured a military-styled building and a test course where prospective buyers could drive the beastly new machines through water, rocks and mud.
GM’s “Keep America Rolling” campaign and zero-percent financing plans, launched after 9/11, suggested that buying a giant, gas-guzzling truck with a $50,000-plus MSRP was one’s patriotic duty.
It was a time when home- equity lines could make dreams come true. Even bizarre dreams about fording rivers, driving over boulders and climbing concrete walls on giant, knobby tires. You know, the kind of dreams that upwardly mobile people have when they are really only driving to the grocery store.
“Bold, rugged, first-class fun,” Wagoner declared at the ribbon-cutting.
Action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger helped forge Hummer’s iconic status as one of the first private citizens to own what was then called a Humvee. Now, he’s California’s governor and drowning in budget shortfalls and debt.
The new hero is Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, which is buying Hummer from bankrupt GM for perhaps $500 million or less.
“The Hummer brand is synonymous with adventure, freedom and exhilaration,” Tengzhong CEO Yang Yi said in a press release, “and we plan to continue that heritage.”
So now we can buy freedom from a company based in communist China.
Like most people, Bergstrom had never heard of Tengzhong, maker of industrial monstrosities such as oil tankers and concrete-pumping vehicles that can make a Hummer look like a Smart Car.
He’s just glad someone will keep making Hummers.
Bergstrom recently lost his Buick franchise, closed four Saturn dealerships because of declining sales and had to lay off hundreds of employees.
“We continue to have a decent Hummer business,” he said. “It’s not booming by any stretch, but nothing is.”
For all its hype, the Hummer was always a niche brand. Sales peaked at 71,524 in 2006. By comparison, Honda has sold more than 50,000 Civics in a month. And when gasoline prices hit $4 last summer, Hummer swiftly became an icon of all that was going horribly wrong at GM.
Mark Wells, president of the off-roading Hummer X Club, said Hummer’s identity as a made-in-America vehicle has long been a source of pride for Hummer owners. At least Tengzhong will continue to make them in the U.S.
Wells said he will soon drive his 2009 Hummer H3 Alpha from his home in Florida to Utah, where he will crawl over rocks with other members of his club. “It will be a bit of a bullet to bite when it’s time to get another one,” he said, “but at least I can still get one.”
He’s hoping the new owner will come up with more innovative designs and give the vehicle a better reputation than the one from stodgy GM.
“The reputation of the Hummer is full of misinformation, and it’s hurt the brand,” Wells said. “You constantly hear that they only get 10 miles per gallon. I get 15. . . . I got that in my (Mercury) Mountaineer, but people weren’t bashing that.”
So bye-bye, big and bloated GM. Hello, Tengzhong. Or should I say “Ni hao”?
Al Lewis: 201-938-5266 or al.lewis@ ; read Al’s blog at
