Billionaire’s Challenge: Who Can Take on HUMMER?

by Gunnar Heinrich ::: img GM ::: HUMMER sale

TALK about having us by the balls.

How awful would it have been for a state supervised, Chinese company to take over the symbolic brand of ‘Merican motor machismo? It’s not like we, the American public, owe Beijing 3/4ths of one trillion dollars or anything.

No, for all the visceral, anti-PC, pro-meat head symbolism that the off-roading, quasi military division trumpets, it is worth keeping HUMMER around. They’re like Tonka toys for adult males who should know better.

So, as GM “winds down” the division and other deep pocketed buyers weigh the pros and cons of picking up what the Chinese regulators turned down, it’s worth understanding HUMMER’s raison d’etre in the market.

You have a sense of humor and a distinctly Hollywood capacity to suspend disbelief when experiencing a Humvee. Yours has only driven the H3 “Alpha”- the Napoleonic model of the off-roading brand’s lineup, selling alongside the granddaddy H1 (born out of Gulf War necessity and discontinued recently) and the H2, a slightly shrunken and more comfy version of the original.

The H3 was an unsteady truck on the road; behaving in a straigh-tline as if it were a backpacker wobbling on rollerblades for the first time. However, the moment you  piloted the H3 off-road, the story changed completely.

What felt like a silly, jiggly ride on asphalt, became a fully competent and compliant ride on dirt tracks; absorbing massive ditches and mounds like a sponge. In the field, the H3 took on a penguin’s grace as it waddled off land and rocketed into the sea.

This is an outdoors brand – much like Jeep – except more exclusive, more flamboyant, and perhaps more macho (thought that’s often viewed as “driver’s over-compensation” by the marque’s detractors).

It’ll take an entrepreneur connected with the company, a sportsman with something to prove, who has deep pockets to front the General the $150 million necessary for acquisition and then at least triple that figure to run it right.

What? Did someone suggest Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and three of his closest venture capitalist friends?

Clock’s ticking…