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…the high gas prices, that is. GM has announced plans to try to sell off the Hummer brand. There’s a good opinion piece about this in the Huffington Post: Ding Dong The Hummer’s Dead!

Surely you know of the Hummer. You may have nearly been run off the road in your econobox by one, at least once in your life. I hate these behemoth vehicles with every fiber of my being.

Now that gas prices have hit $4.00/gallon in most places…the local Mobil station here was $3.99 for regular yesterday…I’ve been beyond thrilled to notice way fewer of these monstrosities clogging up the roads. I heard that it now costs almost $200 to fill the tanks of these things now…time to go out and hock those big diamond rings so you can afford the gas.

Well, this girl won’t be hocking her diamond ring to pay for gas. We have a Ford Focus, which gets about 30 MPG. It costs us about $40 to fill the tank now, and that tank will last longer than the humongous tank of a Hummer.

When the H2 models first came out, I’d seen commercials for them on TV, and the monthly payments were almost as much as the rent on our apartment. But just the other day, I saw a Hummer ad, and saw that one can now lease one for a payment lower than the one we’re making monthly for the Ford Focus.

Hey, but you still gotta put gas in the thing! I doubt that even at a lower price, they’ll be moving many of these things.

Anyway, I was even more thrilled to hear the news of GM trying to sell off the Hummer brand. But, I was not surprised to read that interest is likely to be tepid.  This article says that it’s more likely that the brand will be sold to an overseas company.

I’d like to see GM just do away with it forever, but they are trying to recoup their losses.  But if there are no more Hummers in the U.S., that would make me happy.

The only bad thing here is that many, many auto workers will lose their jobs due to this downsizing.  But I blame GM for this, too.  If they had gotten with the program and concentrated more on building econoboxes, and less on stupid gas-guzzling luxury crap, they would not be in this situation now.  Haven’t ANY of the American car companies learned anything from the energy crisis of the 70′s?

I wasn’t old enough to drive back then, but I remember the long lines at the pumps.  I remember the odd/even license plate thing, you could only gas up on certain days, depending on whether the license plate had an odd or even number.

A lot of auto dealers made their fortune back then by deciding to sell thrifty Japanese cars, such as the Toyota and the Honda.  And those are the ones who are making the money now on new car sales.  Even their SUVs are way better on gas than their American counterparts.

We like the Ford brand; before the Focus we had an Escort, which was also a good, reliable, energy-efficient car.  The Focus was what replaced the Escort as Ford’s signature econobox.  The 2007 Focus got excellent marks in Consumer Reports’ automotive issue, so we went with that.

It’s just too bad that Ford and other American companies couldn’t quit making ginormous luxury SUVs, and concentrate on making more good econoboxes.  Then they would not be in so much trouble.  I hear Ford is making cutbacks, too.

But today I will rejoice…Hummers will soon be no more! :D