Detroit can't seem to sell enough cars or trucks these days without piling on rebates and free financing. With one exception.
Three months into an experiment to bring a smaller and cheaper version of the militaristic Hummer vehicle to a broad audience, General Motors has struck a chord. Put aside the difficulty of selling a US$50,000 sport utility vehicle in a bear market and stagnant economy, or of marketing an automobile that only gets about 4.6 km on a liter (11 miles to the gallon) when there is renewed focus on oil consumption.
Dealers say they are selling as many of these vehicles as they can get. GM's supply is only six days ahead of demand -- automakers prefer 10 times that amount. And Hummer is the only Big Three brand selling largely without any national incentive deals.
Many buyers of this low-end Hummer, called the H2, sound like evangelists and speak of other modern sport utilities as the vehicle of soccer moms -- tame family haulers little different from zoo-bound wildlife too long in captivity. To them, Hummer represents what Ford's Bronco II or Jeep did before sport utilities overran the highways.
"You can't believe the attention it gets," said Robert Fishelson, 65, whose family runs a wholesale liquor company in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Fishelson has outfitted his H2 with lights on top, a winch and his ham radio. "It's like I'm a movie star," he added. "I have young girls, teeny-boppers, yelling out their windows at me."
Having owned 15 Corvettes at various points of his life, Fishelson still says that the H2 is by far his highest-profile automobile.
Environmentalists, though, are incensed that GM is building up a new brand that will probably be the industry's most fuel-inefficient mass market vehicle line, producing higher emissions of smog-causing pollutants and greenhouse gases than do cars and many sport utility vehicles. Not to mention the annoyance to other drivers: The H2, at more than three tons, weighs a ton more than the Ford Explorer and twice what a Ford Taurus weighs and is one of the tallest and widest passenger vehicles on the road.
It is difficult to pinpoint the gas mileage of Hummers because both the original Hummer, a diesel, and the gasoline-fed H2 are so heavy that they do not fall under normal federal fuel economy regulations that govern cars, SUVs and most pickups. As a result, the Hummer's fuel economy does not have to be reported to the government.
The Sierra Club is planning a campaign against the Hummer, along the lines of its effort against the huge Ford Excursion, which the environmental group dubbed the Valdez after the oil tanker that ran aground in Alaska. Ford recently discontinued the Excursion.
"We're going to try to do to the Hummer what we did to the Valdez," said Daniel Becker, the Sierra Club's top energy expert. "Kill it."
But H2 buyers, asked whether gasoline consumption was any consideration, generally assume the question is whether they can afford to fill up the 32-gallon gas tank so often.
"If you can afford to buy an H2, if you get 10 miles to the gallon you're not going to care," said Bill Kramer, a 51-year-old computer programmer from Long Island whose H2 actually gets about 3.8km per liter (9 miles a gallon) around town. "If gas went up to US$3 per gallon, then maybe."
Kramer said his H2 "looks like what an SUV should be."
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