As connoisseurs will certify, daily Hummers are good for you. The Chinese agree and keep us supplied with the delicious staple of GM (and we don’t mean genetically modified) food.

Yesterday, we announced that time may be running out for the Hummer-Tengzhong deal. Jalopnik even went as far as saying that the deal is dead.

“Not so” said Shanghai Daily in the early Chinese morning hours of Wednesday. One of their sources said that “the chances of having the deal approved had dropped to 50-50,” another source of the Shanghai paper remained defiant: “Tengzhong has not given up hope yet to win government approval.”

This (U.S.) morning, the Wall Street Journal weighed in on the matter. Their Beijing correspondent reconnected with her “person close to the situation” after the source had returned from the Chinese New Year holidays. That impeccable source reported that “Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. has been told that the Chinese government won’t clear its deal to buy General Motors Co.’s Hummer unit.”

In the afternoon, Reuters did a straddle.  (Read More…)

Although the Chinese government takes much of February off for New Year festivities, GM’s deal to sell HUMMER to Sichuan Tengzhong has exactly one week left before a self-imposed deadline for completion arrives. The deal is being held up by China’s Commerce Ministry which has publicly said that it wants the Chinese auto industry to consolidate and become “greener,” two goals that are severely at odds with Sichuan Tengzhong’s HUMMER aspirations. Now, the Financial Times reports that Tengzhong may be trying to pull an end-around on the Chinese government by pursuing a purchase via an offshore investment vehicle. This would (in theory) evade the requirement for the Commerce Ministry’s approval. In reality … (Read More…)

HUMMER is the big loser of GM’s dead brand version of “The Biggest Loser,” with an epic 2,493 vehicles left on lots after 9 months of “winding down” (not to mention the two plus years with a “for sale” sign stuck on the brand). As this table from GM’s January sales release shows, even Saab has trimmed more inventory since GM announced the cut to four brands last May. HUMMER did beat the Swedes in sales last year, barely, clocking 9,046 units to Saab’s 8,680. But Saab also sold more 9-7x Trollblazers (2,218) than HUMMER sold H2s (1,513). Figure that out. And people wonder why the Chinese government doesn’t want Sichuan Tengzhong to buy this hummer of a brand. [UPDATE: HUMMER’s Communication Director responds after the jump]

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And another Wale of a story: Just as production of the Hummer H3 and H3T is c oming to an end in Shreveport, LA, Kevin Wale, Prez. of GM China, says he hopes Chinese regulators will finally approve the sale of Hummer to Tengzhong.

“I’m optimistic that it’s going to happen,” Wale told the Freep reporters on the sidelines of the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit. “Tengzhong is not an established manufacturer and that’s an issue that needs to be addressed with the Chinese regulators.” Uh-oh. (Read More…)

According to the Detroit News, production of Hummer H3 and H3T models at its Shreveport, LA plant will stop on Monday, as the in-limbo brand watches its sales collapse. H3 and H3T models account for about a quarter of the Shreveport plant’s capacity, and Colorado and Canyon platformmates will continue to be produced. Meanwhile, the deal to sell the Hummer brand to Chinese firm Sichuan Tenzhong remains unconsummated, reportedly held up by the Chinese government. So when will Hummers go back into production? “When a sale is complete, once marketing kicks back in and there is new interest and enthusiasm, production will fire back up,” says a Hummer spokesman. In other words, never. It’s been a fun ride, Hummer. Thanks for the memories!

Ed Whitacre said yesterday that none of the potential bidders for Saab have come forward with the financing needed. “I think we’ve done everything humanly possible,” Whitacre said. Then he announced that GM will start closing down Saab plants later this week. GM’s really, final, we-really-mean-it-this-time deadline for Saab runs out today.

Who knows, maybe someone will come up with the money. Or at the very least, with some Powerpointilisms: Joran Hagglund, Sweden’s state secretary for industry, said there are bids from two anonymous groups that might make today’s deadline. Except that there is that nasty little detail: “The problem is that none of them can show that they have financing in place,” Hagglund said.
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And the Hummer mess is marching on: Both Tengzhong and SAIC deny reports in the Chinese press that they are planning to cooperate in the production of the Hummer SUV in China. A lot of sense it would make:
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Sweden’s prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt had his fill of failed negotiations. Returning home from round-the-clock talks at the Copenhagen climate conference, he said that he saw the Saab collapse coming. Sweden’s prime minister is “unsurprised” by the collapse of the sale, says Reuters.  Asked if he was surprised, Reinfeldt  said: “No, the process was built around a loss-making company and an American owner that owned Saab for 20 years and made a profit in one of the 20.  It’s clear that it was not successful enough.” Sweden’s head blames GM for the failure.
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As every salesmanperson knows, you’ve got to close the deal. It’s as simple as ABC. Always Be Closing. Looks like the only thing GM is adept at closing is dealerships. All deals to get rid of its unloved, neglected, and money losing brands have either been canceled, or are barely up in the air. From Opel to Saab to HUMMER. Yes, HUMMER. Haven’t we been told that that beast has long been foisted off on a formerly unknown Chinese company called Tengzhong? It hasn’t. And it won’t be for a while. If at all.
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GM’s sales fell by only two percent in November, showing that, unlike Chrysler, its sales are fairly well tied to the overall health of the market. All four of GM’s “core brands” posted month-on-month increases, with Buick up 14.8 percent, Cadillac up 10.3 percent, Chevrolet up 4.5 percent and GMC up 5.4 percent. Non-core brands including Hummer, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn combined for a 47.9 percent decline, to 11,755 units. Cars fell by 1.3 percent, while Trucks were down by 2.8 percent, leaving GM with total deliveries of 151,427 units.

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The Saab deal’s death today marked the third attempted brand sale by GM to go down in flames since exiting bankruptcy. Whether the decision not to sell Opel was a good one remains to be seen (big time!), but at Saturn’s Spring Hill, Tennessee plant, which goes on standby this week, there’s less ambiguity about the situation. Meanwhile, Wild-Ass Rumors that Brilliance will rescue the Saturn brand have been chased by MSM scaremongering about a Chinese-owned GM, lending special irony to the fact that GM’s only brand-divestment success is the $150m Hummer-to-Tengzhong deal which is still pending approval by the Chinese government. Volvo nearly found a home in the Middle Kingdom with Geely, but things are crumbling and new bids are expected. Which means all of Detroit’s orphaned brands are still up in the air, at best. Long-term worries about the strength of the US market may be to blame, although the advanced state of the Hummer deal works against that theory (as Hummer’s viability lives and dies in the US market). Maybe the Chinese mandate for auto sector consolidation has potential Chinese buyers focusing on shoring up their domestic status. Or maybe the Chinese realize that brand equity must be earned, not bought. That appears to be the lesson to be learned from the rise of Hyundai and Kia. Fueled by mainstream design a true compact-to-luxury product range, and a relentless focus on product, they may well herald a decline in the importance of brand strategy. For an industry that practically invented the idea of selling a product without actually mentioning the product, this could be an interesting adjustment.

With all the noise about GM’s interruptus of the Opel sale, we could forget that there is a brand GM wants to sell, badly: Hummer. Since June  it had been announced that the sale of Hummer to little-known Tengzhong in China is as good as done. Except that it wasn’t.

Still ain’t.
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Not THIS HUMMER (that would be a bit of a stretch). But a HUMMER nonetheless. The Associated Press reports that “Data released late last week by the Department of Transportation shows that tens of thousands of trucks, minivans and SUVs with relatively low gas mileage were among the nearly 700,000 vehicles sold under the program in late July and August. It even included a handful of Hummers, a hulking vehicle not usually associated with fuel economy.” I guess the AP couldn’t say “including a big ass gas-guzzling military-themed HUMMER, the vehicle most reviled by people who thought (even for a second) that the $3 billion Cash for Clunkers program’s real goal was improving the fuel efficiency of America’s automotive fleet to help reverse the irreversible catastrophe of global warming.” Now, there’s a lot of parsing and wrangling and finger-pointing to be done here, as usual. But let’s not lose sight of the salient fact: A HUMMER! Why not? Lest we forget, “for buyers of SUVs, pickups and minivans, that difference [between the trade-in and the new vehicle’s mpgs] had to be only 2 mpg.”

In other news, the final sales numbers are out. The Chevy Silverado pipped the F-150 at the C4C post. The manly man’s pickup picked-up 16,330 sales, vs. 16,263 for the tuff enough [sic] F-150. What does that tell you? As the Silverado is a high profit vehicle for its nationalized manufacturer, the taxpayer-funded sales surge has certainly helped the taxpayer-funded automaker stay alive. How great is that? Oh, and HUMMER is still owned by GM, in case you (or GM’s management) forgot.