The Invisible Hand

15 May 2006



Market Forces Kill the H1 Hummer

The Hummer is one of the most controversial vehicles ever made. Its fans love its size, its power, and its macho image. Its detractors hate its size, its power and its macho image. General Motors, which produces the behemoth, has announced that the H1 model is going the way of Ford’s Model T and the AMC Pacer. The market has done what the ranting greens couldn’t – it has killed the original Hummer.

The Hummer is the civilian version of the US military’s High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or HMMWV, which the Pentagon decided would be pronounced “Hum-Vee,” making the “W” as silent as the “e” in “quagmire.” Someone at AM General, which made the military version, noted that the only thing that survived of the late American Motor was the brand name “Jeep,” allegedly short for “general purpose” vehicle, from a war long ago, when the Americans were really the good guys and the other side launched a war of aggression (WWII). AM General thought the public would like to drive what the Army had during Desert Storm. GM bought the rights to it in 1999, and labeled the Hummer the H1.

Since then, the H2 and H3 have come out, both less military looking, more suburbanly sleek, and the H3 is simply smaller. The H1 weighs 4 tons and on a good day will get 10 miles to the gallon. Frankly for a 12-hour ride across the deserts of Baja or the savannahs of east Africa, it may still be a fine machine, but to go to the Kwik-E-Mart for a loaf of bread, some milk and bean dip, it’s too much.

What has killed it is the price of gasoline. The vehicle comes with a 27-gallon tank and an auxiliary tank that carries an additional 24.5 gallons. That gives it a range of 270 miles, or at most 515 miles. Five hundred miles at a price of $150 starts to raise significant questions (like, is it cheaper to fly?), especially if one lives in the West where commutes of 50-miles each way are not considered unreasonable.

That expense coupled with a price tag of $130,000 makes one wonder whether maybe that little Prius hybrid at the dealership across the street doesn’t make more sense. Failing that, there are a great many other SUVs that retail for 30% of that price, get slightly better mileage and still compensate for whatever it is that big monster vehicles are supposed to compensate for. Some times, the market can work after all.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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