And good riddance to bad rubbish. From the CBC:
General Motors will drop the gas-guzzling Hummer H1 at the end of the 2006 model year, the automaker said Friday.
The final H1 is expected to be built in June. About 12,000 H1s have been produced since 1992. The vehicle is based on the U.S. military’s Humvee.
All of 12,000 of them? Wow. A real best-seller, that. And at the price of an average starter home in a modest neighborhood, it’s a real bargain, too.
The company said rising gas prices and the vehicle’s poor fuel efficiency were not behind the decision to drop the H1. GM added that it wants to focus on models that have broader appeal.
Yeah…probably something more like the all-time best-selling vehicle: the Toyota Corolla. Whose price is something like one-tenth that of the H1, and whose gas mileage is nearly ten times that of any Hummer.
The vehicle was popular with off-road drivers, and status-conscious owners are attracted to the H1’s look-at-me factor.
Actually, it’s more of a look-at-me-I’m-a-total-fucking-moron factor. Given that this is the clunker that got its commercial start as a prop in an Arnie Schwarzenegger movie, you’d have to have WAY more money than brains to even contemplate owning one. But since even Arnie is now tooting a different tune (and touting a “greener” Hummer, whatever THAT may be), the Big Ugly Hummer seems to have lost a lot of that dubious-to-begin-with cachet.
Who do GM think they’re kidding, anyway? We all know it’s the price of gasoline killed this beast. It’s going up and up, and it won’t be coming down anytime soon, if EVER. We’re even believed by some very credible experts to be past the Hubbert Peak of oil production. Something like that is bound to take its toll on the appeal of driving a steroided, overrated SUV that corners with all the grace and ease of the Queen Mary.
Let’s hope we’re seeing the end of an era here, and that the H2 and H3 (and any subsequent H-bastards) will soon be following their big ugly brother to the Great Junkyard in the Sky.
And while we’re on the subject of junkyards: How about melting ’em all down–and I do mean ALL, because this is the last vehicle I’d want to see become a nostalgic “vintage” model–and making them into armor for all the ACTUAL Humvees still marooned over there in Iraq, so the soldiers unlucky enough to be driving them no longer have to resort to “hillbilly armor”?
You gotta admit it’s a better idea than trying to build a more mass-appealing Hummer.
