Sun, Nov 03, 2002 page12

• GM's new Hummer finds fans

  The H2 sells at US$50,000 and burns a lot of fuel, but its many new owners say this car with chrome looks cool and it makes them feel more macho

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  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.

  

  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.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  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."

  "People who like to buy the Hummer like to stand out," he added. "I've had an Escalade, a Mercedes, a Jaguar. This Hummer H2 draws more looks and questions than any other vehicle I've owned."

  Trying to broaden the H2's appeal, GM has begun customizing advertisements for different markets, seeking like-minded souls among readers of magazines from Road & Track to Vanity Fair. A recent pullout in The New Yorker included a cartoon depicting frightened cabbies shrinking from an H2 muscling its way down a Manhattan avenue.

  H2 is often presented in GM ads as perfect for those who shop at Restoration Hardware but fancy themselves "rugged individualists," as the company's executives put it.

  Many ads suggest it as a fortress apart from the peopled world. In one TV spot, shot in Iceland and scored with trance-like techno music, a couple who seem to have stepped out of a Banana Republic catalog peacefully navigate hemorrhaging oceans, slate-colored terrain and khaki beaches. He wears a US$4,000 watch; she gazes beatifically heavenward.

  "Need," the ad instructs, "is a very subjective word."

  The Hummer and the H2 are descended from the Humvee, the military transport used in the Persian Gulf War and still in use. GM has sold the Hummer for several years, at about US$100,000. Through a national network of dealerships, GM plans to sell 100,000 Hummers within five years. In just three months, 7,500 H2s have been sold, and GM hopes to sell as many as 40,000 next year -- double the number of Porsches Americans bought last year.

  Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, founder of the consulting firm Archetype Discoveries, on which the Big Three rely for information about their customers, said Hummer was an SUV unfettered from the blandness that had overtaken the category. He interviewed potential buyers on behalf of GM and found a sentiment among buyers that "the SUV is the new minivan."

  With the Hummer, Rapaille said: "People told me, `I can protect my family. If someone bumps into me, they're dead.' People love this feeling." One female H2 buyer told him: "I have three kids in the car with me and no one is going to look at me as a soccer mom."

  A male customer in the construction business said he needed the H2's off-road capability for work, but Rapaille called that explanation an alibi.

  "He could have had a Jeep or another SUV, but the reality is you want to show strength," he said, adding that after the Sept. 11 attacks "we feel we are at war and people feel the need to be protected."

  For its part, GM is facing slim profits, stiff overseas competition and industry sales beginning to slump. The company thinks it may have the beginnings of a brand that people will buy on its own merits and plans to turn Hummer into a post-modern version of Jeep. A pickup H2 is due next year and a smaller, cheaper Hummer SUV is being considered for 2005.
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