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Hummer Dealers ponder no-life Dirt Worshipers

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by Tempus, Jun 13, 2004.

  1. Tempus

    Tempus Senior Member

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    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Jun12.html

    shrugged Jim Matthews, Hummer sales manager at Criswell Automotive in Gaithersburg. "It's people in little [expletive] box cars that don't have a life -- tree huggers."

    Scoffed Harris, of Moore Cadillac and Hummer: "I know there are some dirt worshipers out there screaming about fuel economy and complaining about SUVs, but those guys need to find a new outlet for their anger."

    No Guzzle, No Glory

    History Says Gas Spike Won't Smother SUV Love

    By Jonathan Weisman
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Sunday, June 13, 2004; Page F01

    It can't be easy owning a Hummer these days. If you're not being mocked in television ads, you're cut off by hostile drivers or harassed by environmentalists. Jatinder Sehmi, the owner of a junk-removal franchise in Prince George's County, had a hamburger thrown at his H2 recently.

    "A friend of mine told me he had a car full of nuns give him the finger," chuckled Leo Karl, of Hummer by Karl in New Canaan, Conn.

    And to add insult to injury, a tank of gasoline will now run you at least $60.

    But are these much-maligned Hummer owners regretting their purchases?

    "It hasn't slowed me down a bit," said Dan Johnson, an H2 owner in Rohrersville, Md.

    "Nobody wants to see the price [of gasoline] at $2 a gallon, but you've got to take it with a grain of salt," he counseled. "You don't buy this vehicle and expect it's going to be cheap maintenance."

    With gas prices spiking near record territory and concern rising over oil imports from the volatile Middle East, it would stand to reason that Americans are about to ditch their Hummers and Suburbans for the modern equivalent of those oddities of the 1970s: the AMC Gremlin and Pacer, the Volkswagen Rabbit and the diminutive Datsun B210. There has been an uptick in small-car interest, especially in gas-sippers such as the Toyota Prius, which runs on gasoline and electricity, and some dip in large SUV sales. But more than likely, it's going to take much more than a $60 tank of gas to chase most drivers to a Mini Cooper.

    Since the price shocks of the 1970s, driving patterns have changed, commutes have lengthened, and family checkbooks have fattened. Even child car seat laws have conspired to keep families out of the tiny Honda Civics that grooved to the Bee Gees back then.

    "There's a lot of consumer sentiment bound up in the car they want," said David L. Greene, a corporate fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Center for Transportation Analysis. "If you have your heart set on a pickup truck to haul your mulch, it's going to be hard to get you into a Mazda Miata. If you have six people in your family, it's going be hard to get you to buy a car that seats four."

    Besides, Americans just like big.

    "I am convinced Americans prefer to buy the largest car they can afford," said Bob Casey, curator of transportation at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. "If the largest car they can afford is a VW Rabbit, they will buy it, but if they can step up to something bigger, they will. It gets repeated again and again."

    The recent spike in gas prices is not trivial. Only once before -- during a bleak stretch from 1979 to 1984 -- did the price of a gallon of regular gasoline top $2 (when adjusted for inflation). But automotive industry analysts caution that circumstances today are fundamentally different from the oil shocks that stemmed from the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian revolution. And even back then, the reasons for ditching a Chevrolet Impala for a Dodge Omni were more complicated than simply price.

    Automotive historians look at the 1970s as a remarkable shift in consumer behavior, but the motivations were multiple. What had been a monolithic market for outsized autos had begun fragmenting by the mid-1960s. Pushed by the success of the Volkswagen Beetle, Chevrolet began selling its relatively small Corvair, Ford its Falcon, said Tom Libby, director of industry analysis at the Power Information Network, an affiliate of J.D. Power and Associates.

    By 1970 and 1971, Ford was ready with the Pinto, and Chevrolet had the Vega.

    But the Japanese automakers, Toyota, Honda and Datsun, began arriving on the market with cars that had the appeal of novelty, Greene said. Economy was secondary. And they secured their toehold just when the Arab nations slapped an oil embargo on the United States.

    It was not so much the price of gas that pushed buyers into small cars as the gas lines that ensued when the federal government tried to hold prices down, Libby said. Indeed, in today's dollars, prices crested at $1.74 in 1974, according to the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration.

    "Long gas lines were this visible evidence to the consumer," Libby said. "There was like a panic. People were going to the gas station with their tanks three-quarters full because they were afraid there wasn't going to be any gas left." The power of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries proved to be ephemeral, but the cartel's actions were such a shock that people were convinced life at the gas pump would only get worse, Casey added. Sales of "regular-size" Chevrolets -- Impalas and Caprices -- plunged from 857,204 in 1973 to 552,051 in 1974. Ford sales of LTDs and other regular-size cars dropped from 693,084 to 408,192.

    Small-car sales fell as well, but by much smaller numbers. The Datsun B210 and Honda Civic -- which could practically fit inside the passenger compartment of an LTD -- actually shot skyward.

    But that does not draw a complete picture. Even with gas lines snaking around city blocks, Americans loved muscle. In a year when total U.S. car sales fell 23 percent, sales of so-called specialty cars -- Pontiac Firebirds, Chevrolet Camaros, Mercury Cougars and Ford Mustangs -- rose in 1974 to 14.4 percent of the market, from 10.3 percent the year before. Mustang sales nearly doubled, from 145,168 to 277,075.

    And Americans moved back to their big cars as soon as they could. With gas lines gone and prices falling, the small-car share of the U.S. market skidded from 40.9 percent in 1976 to 31.7 percent in 1979.

    Then came the Iranian revolution, the taking of American hostages in Tehran, the Iran-Iraq war, and we did it all over again. Practically overnight, the small-car market share jumped in 1980 to a record 42.7 percent. In 1981, the nation's top-selling car was the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. In 1982 it was the Ford Escort. The nation's long economic malaise helped push the trend to cheaper, smaller cars.

    For Detroit, it was devastating. The Big Three automakers were ready, with a downsized General Motors fleet, the Chevrolet Citation and the Escort. But the Japanese were more ready, with Accords and Camrys that were simply better cars, Casey said.

    This time, the consumer shift to Japan stuck. Only with the arrival in 1984 of the first modern sport-utility vehicle, the Jeep Cherokee, did Detroit see a future, Casey said. And sure enough, the small-car market-share slide soon began, from a peak of 43.8 percent in 1988 down to 22.9 percent today.

    Will history repeat itself again? Not likely, Greene said.

    "People do care somewhat [about gas prices], but there are two fundamental things that have happened" since the early '80s, he said. "Number one is, people have become wealthier, and the more money they have, the less they care about the price of gasoline. Number two, for new passenger cars, we've already almost doubled our fuel economy since 1975. That makes the fuel component a much smaller part of owning a car."

    In 1975, cars and light trucks averaged 13.1 miles per gallon. Thanks more to federal regulations than consumer preference, cars now drive 24.6 miles on a gallon, although surging sales of SUVs and their 17.9-miles-per-gallon average have dragged down overall fleet efficiency from a peak of 22.1 miles per gallon in 1987 to 20.8 miles per gallon today.

    In 1985, gasoline and oil represented 19.9 percent of the cost of owning and operating a vehicle, Greene said. By 2002, the gas-oil portion stood at 9.7 percent. In a 1997 paper arguing for tougher, government-mandated fuel-efficiency standards, Greene made the case that price would not encourage efficiency. He calculated that if you include the loss of performance and size, an additional five miles per gallon represents a potential savings of maybe $100 over the life of a car.

    "In other words," he wrote, "the incentive to the consumer is . . . on the order of the cost of a set of floor mats."

    That's especially true for someone willing to pay more than $54,000 for an SUV that barely clears 10 miles per gallon. David Harris, Hummer sales manager at Moore Cadillac and Hummer, put it succinctly: "The majority of people who buy a top-end SUV for the most part are not concerned about fuel economy."

    The other problem is driving habits, said Daniel Lashof, a senior scientist and energy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. If every SUV owner traded in for a passenger sedan, the nation would save enough oil to ditch the 2.3 million barrels of oil a day imported from the Middle East, Lashof said, but that is not likely to happen without government intervention.

    Suburban sprawl has Americans driving farther, and traffic has them stuck in their seats, preferably Corinthian leather surrounded by a spacious SUV cab. In 1990, 30.5 percent of workers spent at least 30 minutes traveling to work, according to the Census Bureau. By 2000, 34.5 percent did. Between 1990 and 2001, total vehicle miles traveled in the United States jumped by 574,424, or 29 percent.

    The number of commuters who carpooled, took public transportation, rode motorcycles or walked to work all fell significantly.

    The one tangible sign of anxiety over gasoline usage appears to be the abuse being hurled at SUV owners, especially Hummer owners. The Web site FUH2.com, which encourages a center-finger salute to the vehicle, has so far posted 682 photos of such salutes. HonkatHummers.com sells bumper stickers with its own prescription. The radical environmental group Earth Liberation Front boasts of a half-dozen attacks on SUV dealerships last year, including one in West Covina, Calif., that did $2.5 million in damage.

    "They cut you off -- that's huge; not yielding, lots of fingers," shrugged Jim Matthews, Hummer sales manager at Criswell Automotive in Gaithersburg. "It's people in little [expletive] box cars that don't have a life -- tree huggers."

    Not that the owners seem to mind. Of the 300 Hummer H2s that Capitol Hummer in Greenbelt has sold, "I've never had a customer that's called up and said, 'I can't deal with this anymore. I need to get rid of this,' " said Hummer manager Glen Cardolino.

    Said Karl in Connecticut: "The true Hummer owners, the people most fervent about it, take it as a compliment. They're individuals. They like to stand out in a crowd. That's why they made the decision to buy a Hummer."

    Scoffed Harris, of Moore Cadillac and Hummer: "I know there are some dirt worshipers out there screaming about fuel economy and complaining about SUVs, but those guys need to find a new outlet for their anger. My gosh, look at jets."


    © 2004 The Washington Post Company
     
  2. richard schumacher

    richard schumacher shortbus driver

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    Aww, poor babies. Sounds like someone isn't making their quota this month.

    But there is some truth in this. Americans do like buying bigger cars, which is why we will soon see... big hybrids. 30 MPG isn't as good as 45, but it's a damn site better than 15.
     
  3. shona

    shona New Member

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    I thought the nun story was pretty funny. :lol:

    Although it sounds like the dealer salesmen have to find another outlet for their anger.

    shona
     
  4. woemcats

    woemcats New Member

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    Plus the big hybrids will be polluting less, too. They could make a hybrid Hummer that would improve fuel efficency by 50%... to 15 mpg.
     
  5. Wolfman

    Wolfman New Member

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    Nah, you're talking about GM there. At best, you can expect GM to find an RC car motor and battery, and strap it to one of the accesory drive pullies in the engine. Then they will come brag bout the new "hybrid hummer" that improves fuel mileage by.0000000000000000000001% Then the bean counters will start whining about the extra $17.50 in parts required to build them. :mrgreen:

    Think I'm kidding? The "new" hybrid design to be used in the Saturn VUE hybrid, if it ever is actually released, is a paltry belt driven 42 volt system. GM is also bragging about having "all of the hybrid benefits, at a fraction of the cost."
     
  6. LungCookie

    LungCookie New Member

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    Why would you quote an idiot like that without even doing 5 minutes of fact checking?

    Airliners get about 40 passenger-miles-per-gallon. So unless he always has 4 people in his H2 he's actually getting worse mileage than a jet.
     
  7. bookrats

    bookrats New Member

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    While SUV sales have dropped, Hummer sales have plunged.

    I suspect this particular fad is over, and even if gas prices weren't so high, people would be looking for a different large (or gigantic) car to drive.

    We'll see. All the spin doctoring in the world won't absolve you when the corporate bean-counters grab you at the end of the year, and ask you why your sales projections weren't met.
     
  8. aarons12

    aarons12 New Member

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    did anybody ever tell these people that size doesn't matter? quality over quantity?

    of course, that would wreck my theory of why guys buy hummers... :D
     
  9. Sun__Tzu

    Sun__Tzu New Member

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    Ah, if only wishing made it so. I've always been dubious of numbers I couldn't check myself, so I did some searching around for solid "facts." Since its kinda late, I had to settle for a few basic numbers (I couldn't find the number of SUVs, large SUVs, or the total number of cars on the road today, if anyone has those figures).

    In 2003, Americans travelled 2.8 trillion miles. At an average of 20mpg, that makes 140 billion gallons, or 7.18 billion barrels of oil consumed (19.5 gallons/barrel). Increasing our average fuel efficiency from 20mpg to 40mpg almost perfectly accounts for the 3.6 billion barrels imported every year. At $40/barrel, that's $144 billion, or roughly 25% of our annual trade deficit. Put another way, $144 billion is about 2.5 times the budget of the Department of Education.

    (sigh)
     
  10. paulisme

    paulisme New Member

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    Well, "Hummer" does rhyme with "Dumber"...
     
  11. 8AA

    8AA Active Member

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    This confirms something that I've always suspected; SUV drivers really can see normal sized cars from their high perch, they just choose to ignore us while driving.
     
  12. ALoLA

    ALoLA New Member

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    I wonder if having a Prius Meetup near a Hummer dealership would be asking for trouble? :)
     
  13. Danny

    Danny Admin/Founder
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    Please watch any form of SUV bashing. If you had a Prius & an SUV and went to an SUV enthusiast site I'm sure you wouldn't feel welcomed by people bashing your choice of vehicle.

    Fight about SUVs in General Discussion.
     
  14. rflagg

    rflagg Member

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    You're right - in regards to mpg - but if he wanted to be more clear, he could've referenced that jets occasionally dump fuel directly into the atmosphere, and compaired to the emissions of a Hummer, the former is definately worse. But, he's a car salesman, so what can one expect. :p

    -m.
     
  15. 8AA

    8AA Active Member

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    Sorry
     
  16. Danny

    Danny Admin/Founder
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    So, after watching Deadwood tonight I just realized that the salesman's use of "dirt worshippers" is a pretty derogitory term for Native Americans - anyone else pick up on that?
     
  17. aarons12

    aarons12 New Member

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    that's pretty sad. actually, i have a lot less difficulty imagining that the american indian concept of a 'great spirit' that is common to all living things could be valid, than i do with the major religion's idea of a vengeful supreme being who is constantly choosing sides and destroying things.

    i think 'the force' in star wars is sort of based in that concept, though of course they added to it for their purposes.
     
  18. naterprius

    naterprius Senior Member

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  19. DC Fat Cat

    DC Fat Cat New Member

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    Yeah but how many 777s are there in the world airline fleets? That's a new plane, I'd bet its a small number.
     
  20. Sun__Tzu

    Sun__Tzu New Member

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    "That’s roughly the amount of energy gen­erated by 350 F-150 trucks. In terms of fuel efficiency, a Boeing 777 aircraft, powered by 2 Trent engines, and carrying 300 people, gets about 120 passenger miles to the gallon. You would achieve the same level of efficiency if your car, carrying 4 people, got 30 miles to the gallon."

    So depending on the impact of 4 passengers on fuel efficiency, the Prius (with 4 people, 50 MPG) is getting 200 MPG per passenger. (wow)