Hummer Guy Hummer News and Opinion from an experienced off-road instructor
In a recent interview with About.com at the Detroit Auto Show, HUMMER’s CEO James E. Taylor gave some insight to the brand’s future and the much anticipated H4, a vehicle largely based on the HX concept introduced at the show just a year earlier.
Taylor started off by saying that keeping HUMMER in the marketplace “is what everybody’s wondering about, especially from a customer standpoint. And the dealers, too. My role in life right now is to make sure that happens and to go out and canvass the investment market and find a new mother that wants to invest in the future.”
When asked if he could elaborate on where those investors may be, Taylor replied “No,” but went so far as to confirm that some “developing” nations could be in the running for HUMMER. “The road infrastructures and the driving conditions aren’t pretty everywhere. You’re not just talking about driving around downtown LA. These vehicles lend themselves perfectly to those opening-up markets of India, China, Russia, all of those kinds of places. Therefore, the investment people in those countries are interested too,” Taylor said.
GM has worked hard to paint a clear picture of HUMMER’s future to investors by allowing them to pick up where brand development left off, which includes work on the next generation H2, H3, and the all new H4. “The HX concept that we had last year really felt right as the new H4. It felt right as a HUMMER from a design and performance standpoint…So we had taken that product acceptance as kind of a “go” internally,” said Taylor. “We were acting as if it was going to be a full-bore program. We had a lot of that work done, and we had to put it on hold.”
Taylor closed by saying this about the sale of HUMMER: “I’m optimistic. I won’t make any commitments, because all these internal things and all the stuff in Washington. But if you just asked me today, do I think we’ll find a buyer — well, I think we will.”
Check out the full transcript at About.com, where Taylor also talks about government loans, CAFE standards, and international HUMMER sales.
Source & image: About.com
