WSJ - Afternoon Reading: Anyone Wanna Buy a Gas Guzzler?

[Klaus]

August 18, 2008, 2:03 pm
Afternoon Reading: Anyone Wanna Buy a Gas Guzzler?

Posted by Stephen Grocer

Hummer always seemed like a difficult sale.

After all, Hummer is an icon from an era of cheap gas. So with gas prices having been hovering around $4 a gallon recently and Detroit reeling, the question remains: Who would want to buy the brand? The most likely bidders, according to industry watchers, would come from an emerging market such as India, China or Russia.

One problem: Two firms?one from India and one from China?took a look and said no thanks. Indian car maker Mahindra and Mahindra is taking itself out of the running for Hummer and after holding preliminary talks, China?s Hunan Changfeng Motor has backed off as well, Reuters reports.

So who is left? Well, David Kiley reports over at BusinessWeek?s Auto Beat blog that Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska as well as a Turkish private-equity group have inquired about buying the brand. Their interest, Kiley explains, make sense:

?Sales and interest is holding up abroad, especially in Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries where gasoline is much cheaper and in some cases subsidized by the government. Too, audacious looking vehicles like Hummer, often decked out in expensive after-market equipment, are popular with the growing number of wealthy Russians, including the ?gangster class.??

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Maybe Putin will buy it as official pace car of KGB