Hummer heaven

I got this delightful bit from Ken Sain's blog. Yep, it's where all good little Hummers go to die and rust away, unloved and undriven. A dealer in Southern California is having to store his oh-so-recently popular inventory, and is stashing them somewhere away from his lot, which doesn't have room for them all. The Mess That Greenspan Made claimed the dealer was panicking and trying to keep from scaring off his new and nervous Hummer-buying customers by keeping the enormous backlog out of sight, but they were being satirical. Apparently 300 Hummers is an ordinary inventory level, and the new ones are still selling briskly.

I wonder. Sales are down on SUVs 23%, and I've noticed that the shiny red behemoth that occasionally appears in the Golden Eagle parking lot from time to time hasn't been around since late this summer. Bet its owner isn't feeling so smart right about now. Investing so much energy into an exaggerated secondary sexual characteristic can lead to an evolutionary dead end, don't you know. But people seem to like them anyway: sales are still going up. Stupid, if you ask me.

Wonder how Hummer of Alaska is doing these days?

I note that, interestingly, there is something called a "Hummer Tactical Mountain Bike", evidently "created for the US Marines" and "designed to be rugged enough to drop from a military aircraft." It's what's known in the trade as an "automobile accessory."

And there is a hydrogen-powered Hummer. Apparently General Motors CAN read the writing on the wall...although these vehicles still waste an incredible amount of fuel just in their manufacture, and they're so heavy that they'll still get lousy mileage. Not exactly green.