Generation Bubble

According to a New York Times article posted Monday, Hummer was supposed to be history by now:

Sales of Hummers over all have fallen so far — 51 percent last year, the worst drop in the industry — that General Motors is trying to find a buyer for the brand. Without one, the company might close Hummer. An announcement about Hummer’s fate may be made Tuesday.

The news seems almost too good to be true. Steel-reinforced bumpers and 30″ rims make GM’s Hummer the most obnoxious passenger car on the road. And intentionally so: Hummer, once the Hum-Vee manufactured for the US military, found new life as a strip-mall assault vehicle for soccer moms and middle managers. Why just pick up the kids or groceries when you can evacuate them?

Apparently, however, being the biggest bad-ass in the office park simply no longer squares with the currently austere national mood. The Times quotes Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with the research firm I.H.S. Global Insight, as admitting that the Hummer epitomizes “conspicuous consumption” of the rankest sort, a vehicular nose-thumbing at Peak Oil and the Greenhouse Effect.

Too bad the global financial system had to collapse for folks to be shamed out of driving these behemoths. But thank goodness the demilitarization of the suburbs has effectively begun.