Wild Ass Rumor of the Day: Mahindra (and Mahindra) to Buy Hummer?

by Frank Williams

Published: June 16th, 2008

wild ass rumor of the day mahindra and mahindra to buy hummer

As Mark Phelan pointed out, GM would dearly love to unload the unloved HUMMER brand on some overseas ~~sucker~~ investor. The rumor mill is gristing the idea that India's Mahindra and Mahindra may scarf the tree hugger's least favorite vehicle of all time, ever. It seems only natural; the company's been building the AXE, a Humvee knockoff, for the Indian Army. Just-Auto cites an anonymous "senior official at M&M" who told them "Mahindra is very keen on acquiring the Hummer, because of many reasons, but I can't go into all of them but for one it is the most seen vehicle on TV in any country, these days at least the military version of it. It is still too early to talk of prices and timeframes but we are in the process of designing a civilian version of the Mahindra AXE and owning the vehicle it was modelled [sic] after would make a lot of sense." Not only that, HUMMER would give them a well-known premium brand to compete against rival Tata's recent Land Rover acquisition. Analysts think the HUMMER brand could put about $750m into GM's coffers. Or not.

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4 of 18 comments

Dynamic88 on Jun 17, 2008
Well, I did suggest this 2 weeks ago but was derided. Maybe people can’t accept that women might have a clue about the car industry…… Yes you did suggest it. I questioned it, and still do. M&M already knows how to make this type of vehicle, only more fuel efficient. The Indian army doesn't need Hummer, and the civilian population of India certainly doesn't - not in any large numbers. Arguably, it would give M&M a foot in the door in NA, but they'd be better off bringing their own products up to US spec than spending money on Hummer. Even Bajaj's little Ape clones were brought up to US spec for sale here, so it's not like it's a Hurculean task. As RF has said in the past, never underestimate the mania for aquisition. Hummer sort of reminds me of Avanti - there's a small diehard market which will keep it around in very low volume forever. But is this a market worth having? And more to the point, aren't there better ways to enter this (dwindling) market than buying Hummer?

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JJ on Jun 17, 2008

@factotum They are building Hummers in Russia already. But there is a very limited market. Not every Russian is an oligarch. A lot of them are though. Moskow has more millionaires and billionaires than any other city in the world. Some 120000 millionaires live there, and more importantly, it's Russia, so pc-ness doesn't affect sales too much (yet). If a company like Gemballa is able to sell batches of this to them Hummer must be able to sell one or two H2s to unsuspecting rich Russians...

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Menno on Jun 17, 2008

Pch101, AM General cannot be sold to a foreign company if they wish to continue to sell any military products to the United States Military. Or at least, that is how things used to work. In today's world, God only knows what's going on...

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Pch101 on Jun 17, 2008
AM General cannot be sold to a foreign company if they wish to continue to sell any military products to the United States Military. The point that I was making earlier is that AM General's relationship with the US military may be coming to a close. If the replacement for the Humvee goes to someone else, then AM General is going to be stuck between a rock (GM dumping their distribution and production agreement) and a hard place (the military choosing a different contractor.) That would leave AM General stuck with a military vehicle for export in a high cost labor market, and an idle production line for civilian SUV's that not many people want. If I was AM General's owner, I'd be eager to sell it.

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