If you want to be seen as a flag-flying, macho American, you’ve got to have the right ride — and nothing says swaggering hedonism and outta-my-way arrogance quite like a Hummer.
Yes, it’s a high-dollar, gas-guzzling symbol of excess, but hey, that’s the point! As the founder of a Hummer support group once snarled, “Those who deface a Hummer in words or deed deface the American flag and what it stands for.”
Actually, I thought the flag stood for liberty and justice for all, but that’s now just a quibble, because Hummer no longer flies the red, white and blue. It’s turned commie! General Motors has quietly sold its Hummer division to the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co., a construction and equipment conglomerate in the bicycle-pedaling People’s Republic of China.
The land of Mao, who vehemently denounced the material and moral decadence of the West, now owns one of the West’s most decadent consumer products. Though the Hummer’s Chinese name is “Han Ma,” the marketing concept for this humongous armored chunk of ostentatious testosterone remains the same. Han Ma means “fierce horse.”
It’s a brave new car world we now live in. GM, a remnant of its former self, is essentially owned by the U.S. government, Chrysler is coming under Italian control, and both Jaguar and Land Rover are in the hands of India’s Tata Motors.
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