Good-bye to the Hummer, Finally?
General Motors just announced that it’s considering discontinuing the Hummer line.
Quite frankly–I’m delighted.
Out of all the people who buy SUVs in general, I’m guessing somewhere between five and ten percent actually need one:
Border Patrol agents
Extremely tall people who don’t fit easily into small cars
There might be a few other categories but I can’t think of them at the moment.
Not one of these people actually needs a Hummer!
Extreme even among SUVs, Hummers get terrible mileage, hog more than their share of natural resources, block other drivers’ view of the road, and are wildly overpriced in my opinion.
The 2008 Hummer H3, maybe the most fuel-efficient in the brief history of this GMC division, gets 14-15 miles per gallon. Some of the older models get 9.
I don’t think any responsible person could justify a Hummer.
By the way, if you’d like to know how it happened that SUVs went from almost a non-category to such major market dominance, read It’s the Crude, Dude, by Linda McQuaig. It wasn’t an accident, but had a lot to do with U.S. government policies that allowed these monsters to bypass fleet-wide passenger car fuel efficiency regulations.
Also, for a nice piece contrasting the Hummer with, of all things, Prius, here’s a cool article in Slate.
