Sin City HUMMER Dealer Dies a Death
Wall Street Journal scribe John. D Stoll gets it right: if HUMMER can’t make it in Las Vegas, it can’t make it anywhere. The fact that a Vegas-based HUMMER dealer is now as dead as a dodo indicates that the entire brand faces the same non-future. “This closing is notable because of where it is taking place and who is pulling the plug. It is, after all, one thing for enviro-friendly people in San Francisco–another city that recently lost a key Hummer dealership–to shun the brand. It is entirely different when Sin City decides the vehicles are too excessive. [Dealer owner Dan] Towbin said Las Vegas is a custom fit for Hummer. ‘It’s all about bling and it’s in the desert.'” It’s also about price (high), demand (low), resale (horrendous) and incentives (Olympian). In fact, how’s this for a parenthetical aside? “(Towbin says he was offering $6,000 in incentives, not including GM’s employee-pricing discount, hurting profit margins.)” Followed by “Hummer discounts represent 22.6% of the price of the vehicle–the highest in the industry, Edmunds.com says. And still Hummer sales are down 47% this year, the largest decline of any brand, according to Autodata Corp.” So, will anyone take this three-ton turkey off of GM’s hands? How’s that old joke go? For a nickel I will.
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Stephen: The Hummer Franchise in Reno is owned by Winkel Motors who also has a GMC/Pontiac and Saturn Store at the same location.
I agree 100%. It could have gone differently had they treated it as the niche brand that it always should have been. The H1 was allowed to die on the vine. It would have been awesome if they offered a true competitor to the Jeep Wrangler. They would have co-evolved and expanded the off road world. As it is GM just milked it to death with an overpriced Tahoe MILFmobiles. Ingvar: Truth: Hummer as a brand died when GM buried the original H1. Had GM continued believing in the brand, they wouldn’t have killed the only car that was true to the brands core values. H2 and H3 are poseur pieces of shit. With fake snorkels. Had GM continued investing in proper r&d, we would have an updated H1, or perhaps by 2010, an altogether new car that could have been the ultimate off-roader. The true King of the Hill. And there’s always a market for that kind of car, at any price. But only if it is the best there ever was. Corporate mismangament and lack of proper r&d runs havoc through the company. Now as then.
Gee, I reported this on TTAC over a week ago.
Try this tack http://www.news.com.au/comments/0,23600,24311786-2,00.html