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Wednesday, June 03, 2009

The symbol of American faux-macho is now Chinese
Posted by Jill | 5:11 AM
Remember after the 9/11 attacks, when the Hummer became the must-have vehicle, the tough guy symbol to end tough guy symbols? It was one thing to slap a photo of Osama Bin Laden in crosshairs and a bumper sticker reading "These colors don't run" on the back of your Ford Expedition. But to do that on a Hummer meant you were REALLY an American patriot. You were Protecting. Your. Family.™ Never mind that you lived in Nebraska and had about as much chance of being hit by terrorists as you had of stepping out of bed and falling into the ocean. After all, the Hummer was Ah-nuld's vehicle of choice. It was big, it was badass, and in a Hummer you owned the road, your dick became bigger, and you could bully all those pussy-asses in their Civics.

I wonder how all those super-patriot Hummer owners feel now that the brand of the vehicle they love has been sold to a Chinese company:
The buyer is the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company, based in Chengdu, G.M. said Tuesday. The price was not disclosed, but industry analysts had estimated that the Hummer division would sell for less than $500 million.

The deal, expected to close in the third quarter, would make Tengzhong the first Chinese company to sell vehicles in North America, though Hummer’s operations would remain in the United States.

“The Hummer brand is synonymous with adventure, freedom and exhilaration, and we plan to continue that heritage by investing in the business, allowing Hummer to innovate and grow in exciting new ways under the leadership and continuity of its current management team,” Yang Yi, the chief executive of Tengzhong, said in a statement released by G.M. “We will be investing in the Hummer brand and its research and development capabilities, which will allow Hummer to better meet demand for new products such as more fuel-efficient vehicles in the U.S.”

[snip]

Tengzhong is a privately owned company, but Tuesday’s deal required preliminary vetting by Beijing officials, who retain the right to veto any effort at an overseas acquisition by a Chinese company and who give special attention to deals of more than $100 million.

Tengzhong is known in China for making a wide range of road equipment, from bridge piers to highway construction and maintenance machinery. But even before the Hummer deal, the company had been moving more into heavy-duty trucks, including tow trucks and oil tankers.

“Over all, we’re pretty pleased,” said a Hummer spokesman, Nick Richards. “If you think about the qualities we’d want in a new owner for the brand, this buyer really met all the criteria. They’ve got a proven track record in international business, and they’ve got a long-term vision for the brand. They’ve got the capital to invest in more efficient vehicles, which is what’s necessary to grow the brand.”

If the deal is completed, it would be the first acquisition of a well-known American auto brand by a Chinese company, after many months of speculation about such a deal. Chinese automakers have already purchased the MG and Rover brands, two of the most famous names in British automotive history.

As a Chinese company, Tengzhong could face a challenge in presenting the deal to American Hummer owners. The brand has long sought to emphasize patriotism, stressing that the Hummer H1 was essentially the same vehicle built in the same factory as the Humvee that carries American soldiers into battle in Iraq and elsewhere.

It should be noted that the Hummer that we see on American streets is no longer the one that was made for the U.S. military, so there's no need for wingnuts to have the vapors about the capacity for manufacture of American military vehicles being sold to the Chinese. But the symbolism of the vehicle that more than any other embodied the faux masculinity and toughness of the Bush years is now just so much detritus to be sold off to China for a relative pittance.

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