Thursday, May 17, 2007

Hummer News

The HUGE Hummer went on sale back in the early 90's during Desert Storm and I remember when our used Jeep salesmanager thought he was The MAN when he bought one at an auction for $30K. It was kind of like a trophy for him. I actually got to ride in it and thought it was a little bit neat. Well, customers let it sit on our lot for 6 months and that was when gas was probably less than $1.50. I think we lost money on it to let it go. It was just a BIG vehicle and probably didn't fit thru most bank or restaurant drive thrus. Later down the line Hummer came out with a better sized H2 and then really went normal sized with the H3.

I do see plenty of these vehicles and saw a $50K H2 tonight being driven by a local dentist who advertised www.localdentist.c om, the local being my home town. I also saw this same website on an expensive BMW convertible. Business must be good, or the insurance companies pay well.

Back to the Hummer. I can't help but wonder how bad sales are now that gas has consistently stayed between $2.50 and $3.00. This on top of the bad PR Hummer must take for being the vehicle in which so many of our military heroes have died in due to roadside bombs. In the Hummer these guys don't stand a chance.

There is promising news about a new vehicle designed specifically to withstand the #1 cause of death to our military. The following is an excerpt about the MRAP that I found on wikipedia.

Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles are a family of armoured fighting vehicles designed from the ground up to survive IED attacks and ambushes. There is no common design, there are several vendors, each with a competing entry.[1]

They have not released casualty rates from this vehicle which is in early testing, but the death rate is supposed to be very minimal. Good news for those who will be stuck over there in future years.

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