No Longer Hummin’
From yesterday’s Five Things:
Goodbye, Hummer!
According to the Financial Times, General Motors will make a decision on whether to sell or simply close down its Hummer brand by the end of this quarter. ”US sales more than halved last year, including a 59% fall in December compared with a year earlier, the FT noted.
Funny, no one was talking much about the “death of the Hummer” as prices steadily marched from $16/bbl to $140. And yet, here we are back at $37/bbl and the brand is dead? Beyond salvaging? Even more strange is the year Hummer’s sales peaked: 2006. Yes, 2006, when the price of oil averaged more than $60/bbl, almost twice what it is now.
What changed? Well, it might be nice to think that folks simply became more environmentally conscious and “Green aware,” but the reality is that what changed is simply social mood and the perception of public displays of wealth and luxury.
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post. Trackback URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Yeah, it’s not just the cost of gas. Prius sales dropped 48% in November. I dont remember seeing the Dec figure, but I bet it fell off a cliff in Dec too. Being “green” is fine when you have food on the table, when you don’t some folks forget the green stuff.
Comment by Bruce — 1/13/2009 @ 9:48 am