AP Source: GM to sell Hummer to Chinese company

Business Week ^

[Oakeshott]

General Motors Corp. took a key step toward its downsizing on Tuesday, striking a tentative deal to sell its Hummer brand to a Chinese manufacturer, while also revealing that it has potential buyers for its Saturn and Saab brands.

GM has an agreement to sell its Hummer brand to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. of China, said a person briefed on the deal.

The Detroit automaker announced Tuesday morning that it had a memorandum of understanding to sell the brand of rugged SUVs, but it didn't identify the buyer. A formal announcement of the buyer was to be made Tuesday afternoon, said the person briefed on the deal. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been made public.

Sichuan Tengzhong deals in road construction, plastics, resins and other industrial products, but Hummer would be its first step into the automotive business.

GM said the sale will likely save more than 3,000 U.S. jobs in manufacturing, engineering and at various Hummer dealerships.

[Mr. Lucky]

Knda ironic, eh?, that vestigal manufacturing units of Willys-Overland and Studebaker Packard combined to outlive General Motors.

[NathanR]

No. American General manes HUMVEEs for our military. they also made H1 and H2 Hummers for GM as well. The H3 is all GM. They stopped making H1s a few years ago and the H2s around the first of the year when GM started having so many problems.

[NathanR]

Sad too. However, GM still technically exists. (as a zombie)

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks NathanR.

[kjam22]

It will end up the same size, but with seating for 24.

[TigersEye]

The GM Hummer bears no similarity whatever to the American General Humvee.

That is so true. The most special thing about the Humvee was its unique drive train. GM just stuck a basic GM 4X4 drive train in their Hummers. Nothing special.

[calex59]

can you imagine the owners manual? It will be in chinglish and unusable.

I remember back in the day I bought a Suzuki 250 Motorcycle and raced it for a while. The owner's manual was printed in English but was almost incomprehensible. None of the sentences made sense. I can just imagine what a Chinese owner's manual for a Hummer would read like.