GM and Hummer have officially decided to discontinue the Hummer H2 after years of lagging sales and a good deal of negative publicity that the car has brought to GM.
While the car remains popular, the Hummer brand in general, and the H2 specifically, have been on a continual sales slide for the last five years or so. The vehicle, which is the most inefficient SUV on the road, has become less appealing since gas prices have more than tripled in the last 10 years.
GM has also bemoaned that its "iconic" vehicle has such a negative stigma with a large and growing portion of the population while the world's largest company, Toyota, has the Prius as its iconic vehicle.
The question is, what vehicle will replace the H2 as GM's icon in the next 10 years? The bad news is that GM is going to keep selling the car in its current incarnation until 2011 at least, possibly hanging around until 2014. But development on updated H2s, and the planned diesel version, have both been canceled. Hummer will keep making cars, but will concentrate on the smaller H3, and the even smaller upcoming biofueled HX.
HummerGuy.net points out that there have been no set time lines and it's possible that GM could still change its mind on this one. And while that is certainly true, I just don't see room for the H2 in the consumer market place any longer. Let's hope that this focus on efficiency and consumer demand for greener-looking companies will have real effects on vehicle efficiency in the next 10 years.
