Breaking: GM Sells Hummer to China's Sichuan Tengzhong
General Motors has sold its Hummer brand of SUVs to Chinese heavy industrial machinery builder Sichuan Tengzhon. No details have been released but the sale was reportedly made for a sum of just $150 million.
GM CEO Fritz Henderson had estimated in documents filed during GM’s bankruptcy proceedings that the brand could be worth as much as $500 million.
The once glamorous brand of massive and massively expensive SUVs began to suffer when the price of fuel spiked last year, but the recession hurt the company far more as it has recorded a 64 percent decline in sales so far in 2009. That drop is the largest sales decline recorded by any automobile brand this year.
Tengzhong will take over Hummer’s brand network as well as it’s manufacturing processes, however, GM will continue to build the H2, H3 and H3T on contract until June 2011. Brand CEO Jim Taylor will remain on with the company.
The sale of Hummer is actually the first successful one in GM’s brand elimination process. The company announced it would eliminate Pontiac, while selling off Saturn, Saab and Hummer and keeping four core brands: GMC, Buick, Cadillac and Chevrolet. The sale of Saturn to Penske recently fell through while GM has yet to sign a contract with Koenigsegg group, which is interested in Saab.
[Source: Automotive News]
With AutoGuide from its launch, Colum previously acted as Editor-in-Chief of Modified Luxury & Exotics magazine where he became a certifiable car snob driving supercars like the Koenigsegg CCX and racing down the autobahn in anything over 500 hp. He has won numerous automotive journalism awards including the Best Video Journalism Award in 2014 and 2015 from the Automotive Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Colum founded Geared Content Studios, VerticalScope's in-house branded content division and works to find ways to integrate brands organically into content.
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