Thursday, February 25, 2010

End Of The Road For The Hummer

It is richly ironic that Toyota beat out General Motors as the world's leading automaker because it supposedly put quality and reliability before profits and the Japanese automaker now finds itself caught in the slings of adversity because it too put profits before quality and reliability.

An upshot of GM's profligacy is that the American public is now a majority shareholder in the once mighty company, which has been shedding brands like a molting dog as a condition for getting billions of dollars in federal loans.

But GM is still stuck with a bummer called Hummer and announced yesterday that the gas-guzzling brand will be put out of its misery now that a deal with a Chinese company has fallen through.

Photograph by Tim Boyle/Bloomberg News

No comments: