Monday March 08, 2010

GM to wind down Hummer as Sichuan Tengzhong sale accord fails

bloomberg.com :

General Motors said it will close Hummer, the maker of military-inspired sport-utility vehicles, after Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. couldn't win Chinese approval to buy the unit. Winding down the brand will take several months, a spokesman said. "The Hummer brand was very much a product of its time," said Aaron Bragman, an analyst at IHS Global Insight. "In today's much more environmentally conscious world, it's a brand that just doesn't fit in."

Tengzhong was "unable to obtain clearance of the transaction from the Chinese regulators within the proposed deal time frame," according to a statement from the company. The deal would have been worth $150 million. A Tengzhong purchase of Hummer would have bucked China's government policy of promoting fuel-sipping small cars of less than 1.6L. US sales for GM's Hummer unit fell 67% in 2009 as the economy faltered, GM slid into a 40-day government-backed bankruptcy and Hummer's fate was unresolved.

- No love lost for the SUV's of the world, as you might guess from my Jun 2005 blog entry aptly titled "Die SUVs Die!!". They sure took their time to go about it, as it is with any large ongoing trend, and this Hummer shutdown announcement is surely not only the latest but one of the largest nails in the coffin (if you'd excuse the metaphor-mangling).

See also :

1. Die SUVs Die!!
2. Small cars staging big comeback
3. Ford SUV sales drop 50%, GM SUV sales drop 34%
4. GM files for bankruptcy, gets delisted from Dow Jones and NYSE
5. New GM exits bankruptcy after selling good assets

(2010-03-08 18:17:14 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

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