Those Hummers are just FLYING off the shelves

Thought that some of you might enjoy this - a couple guys go investigate a local glut of Hummer inventory.

"The word around town was that the Hummers weren't moving... We were skeptical at first. Sources can be unreliable, but the scuttlebutt was that inventory had been building for months now and the local Hummer dealer had panicked. He had begun storing his Hummer inventory at an undisclosed location, far from the dealer showroom so as not to spook jittery, prospective buyers with the mounting number of unsold H2s and H3s."

Amusing/appalling story and pictures here.

OMG!!!

i am laughing so hard i cant even see what im typing

I saw that link to the blog and photos in the "Other Cars" forum the other day. Those pictures are truly priceless!

I drove past a Hummer dealer in Sacramento a few days ago and was somewhat shocked at how full the lot looked. I pondered it for a while. It really doesn’t take all that many Hummers to fill up a dealer’s lot, but this lot was so packed, it looked bloated!

Has anyone bothered to read the follow up to the story? It appears the story is not quite as accurate as expected, although who knows for sure.

At $40 a pop, that's a 12 million dollar inventory. Unlikely they'd stay in business long if they not selling ANY.

Regardless of why the Hummers are in that lot, it's still a priceless thing to see a picture of so many of them lined up like that, ready to go to whomever needs an 'urban assault vehicle'. Thousand Oaks eh? Too bad they're not closer, I'd love to get a look-see in person. (If I had my Prius already, the 65 miles wouldn't stop me-as it is currently, that's approx. 1/3 a tank of gas for me round trip).

I don't know if this is important or not but on October 30 I saw a road side billboard ad just above a Hummer dealer for Toyota HSD. It was so good that I went back on 11/3 to take a picture of it and it was gone! One wonders why?

Yeah, the follow-up claimed 300 cars is a normal dealer inventory, and it said the H3s are selling briskly, though the H2s are not. But what's funny is the Consumer Reports review of the H3 totally slammed it -- apparently it takes 11.5 seconds to go 0-60, it got an average of 14 mpg when they drove it, had horrible visibility (just look at those windows), etc. Yet the consumer opinions were almost all positive. Quote from one post: "Pros: Turns on a dime and gets 20 MPG HWY!!!" WOW! (CU actually got 17.) Another person called the car's gas mileage a "plus".

Actaully the H1 and H2 are not moving very well at all, but GM is trying find extra production capacity for the H3.

It's actually a pretty good strategy for a vehicle like that that isn't selling very well. That is, make it seem scarce by storing the fleet of them somewhere else and just lie to the customers that you can't keep them on the lot. Well, that's a half truth. Then, the customer may be conned in to buying one when you pull him aside and whisper that you can get hold of one if he's really keen on getting one. It must be tough to be a car salesman at a GM dealer - having to lie all the time.

That is what we call "lowered expectations."

Are you dizzy yet from all the spin ?

GM reported that hummer sales in September were 129% greater than the same period last year. Sounds good for hummer, but --

By September 04, H2 sales had plummeted. H3 went on sale in 5/05, and at least for the first couple of months, has been selling at about a 3k/month clip. So a large part of the good news is simply a new model initially doing better than the end-of-life previous model. The next six months and beyond will tell how much wind the H3 has in it's sails. If you doubt the ability of a US brand to only last long enough to put out a PR blurb, check out the C300 sales.

The other bit of GM spin has to do with production: The H3 is a camoflouged truck called the colorado, and well as a sister model name I cannot remember. Between the three of them, there is current adequate demand to increase output at one factory. GM would like people to believe that hummer itself is flying off the shelves so fast that an entire factory has to gear up to meet consumer demand, but this is BS. Like Malorn was saying, GM is all about 'perception'. But then, without substance, what is left ?

I wasn't trying to "spin" anything, just lay the truth out there. The H3 has been a pleasant surprise for GM. GM is increasing production of the H3. What about that is spin? Hummer had a 120% increase in sales in October '05 over October '04 on the back of the H3. You are correct in the fact that H2 sales especially are way off! Hummer sold 4,461 H3 in October, which is slightly more sales than Toyota registered with the RAV4.

I don't believe that EricGo was directing that at you, malorn.

The situation is similar at the Hummer dealer in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was there two weeks ago, and they have rows and rows of them! It's been like that for a while in GR, though. The Hummer dealer in Colorado is too far from my house to drive down and look (I think it's over 50 miles away through heavy traffic) but I bet there are quite a few of them.

The H3 is a gutless wonder. 0-60 in 12 seconds! That 2 seconds slower than my Prius! Would it kill them to put a V6 in there?

I can't wait until they introduce the H4, based on the new Chevrolet HHR with a 4-cyl! Maybe they will actually get over 20 MPG!

Nate

Does anybody have a link to this editorial cartoon that ran a few months ago? It shows a gas station island with a sign on top of the pumps that reads, "Free SUV with every fillup".