HUMMER CEO Compares Buyer Search to Speed Dating

James Taylor HUMMER“I call it very fast speed dating. We have to look at each other, see if we like each other and then get it done very quickly,” HUMMER CEO Jim Taylor told Automotive News regarding their search to find a buyer for the brand. The original plan to sell HUMMER to China’s Tengzhong fell through Wednesday after Chinese regulatory officials refused to allow the purchase, leaving GM with the task of finding a new buyer in the next 60 to 75 days.

“The next step in the process is to sit down with those interested parties and figure out who is serious and who just doesn’t make any sense,” Taylor said. “Some are well-known equity houses, who do this for a living. Some are just those who say, ‘I want to buy it.’”

Taylor added that his team is, “going to do everything in our power to bring this home in the next couple of months,” assuring that the fight is not over yet.

During the process, Taylor says he won’t forget about the dealers – who he says is one of the strongest assets HUMMER has. Only 10 dealerships have closed since the announcement of the HUMMER brand going under review in 2008 according to Taylor, and he intends to keep the remaining dealers in the loop by providing a weekly update.

“We’ve been very fortunate that almost through two years, dealers have hung in with us,” Taylor said. “It’s vital to the sale”

Source: AN

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35 comments

  1. Wow, this is great news!!! I knew all along HUMMER would be sold shortly. People are just too quick to think the worst.

    I’m positive in the next 60 to 75 days a sale will be finalized!!! HUMMER is the most famous brand in the world second to none!!! To buy the HUMMER brand for less than 150 million, a brand that will be worth billions of dollars very soon with the release of the new makes and models coming just around the corner is the deal of a lifetime for the right savvy buyer who sees this for the absolute goldmine it truly is!!!

    Always Believe in HUMMER!!!

  2. DAMN RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!

  3. DAMN DAMN RIGHT!

  4. He is right. There is not a better network of dealers than those for Hummer. I am glad they are keeping them in the loop, because if a deal is made, if the dealers to not support it and Hummer owners… well they just started from one big hole to climb out of.

  5. I am not sure if this is appropriate here, however I would like to share why I LOVE my HUMMER and will fight for HUMMER in any way I can to save the brand because the only way I’ll stop driving HUMMERs is when you pry the steering wheel of my HUMMER out of my cold dead fingers!!! Perhaps we can all share our stories as to why we LOVE our HUMMERs. Here are a couple of mine:

    My HUMMERs have saved my life by getting me over roads in -50 temperatures where other vehicles would have succumb to the ice, cold and deep snow and ultimately failed leaving me stranded in the woods to die.

    Because HUMMER saved my life various times I am now going to fight to save HUMMER’s life, it is the #1 vehicle I have ever driven and is totally unstoppable even in the worst of conditions. When the entire city is shutdown in extreme weather the HUMMER ploughs through whatever Mother Nature can throw at it. Even if snow is up over the rocker panels the HUMMER will keep pushing snow with ease!!!

    I once broke through ice near the Atlantic Ocean with the HUMMER and fell deep in to a hole filled with ice water, I thought I was done for but I put the HUMMER in 4-low, locked in the rear axle and gave the HUMMER all the gas it could take and that engine immediately came to life like an angry mother grizzly bear even though it was covered over in freezing cold water and then the HUMMER started throwing chunks of ice as big as Smart cars left and right and all over the place bigger than anything I could have ever thought possible causing waves of water on each side of that HUMMER to form up somewhere between 15 and 20 feet high way up over my roof in the air almost like a Tsunami as the HUMMER tore up frozen chucks of ice and broken chunks of asphalt and pavement from the road and the HUMMER rose up like a wild snorting championship stallion out of that hole and got me home alive!!!

    Once I was out of the hole I thought the HUMMER was demolished from going through all that, I figured I’d be on nothing but the rims due to the near iceberg size chunks of ice hitting the sides of my HUMMER and I thought most of the underbelly would be left in the hole it was in because it was in so deep amongst huge chunks of ice and broken up asphalt and pavement, to my sheer amazement there were no broken parts floating in the ice cold ocean water to be found and not even a single scratch or dent to be found on the HUMMER!!! The HUMMER got me home without even a single hiccup along the way on my one hour drive home even after swimming in ice cold ocean water almost up to the mirrors!!! I did not need to book any time at the body shop the following Monday, like I’ve been saying all along, HUMMERs are built like “TANKS!!!”

    Anyways I’m getting a little emotional now thinking about all my HUMMERs have done for me over the years because without HUMMER I would not be alive here today typing this message to you now, so I’m going to end this here however I will always believe in the power of HUMMER throughout my entire life and will fight for HUMMER for as long as I live and am still breathing air!!!

    God Bless You ALL with many riches and powerful HUMMERs throughout your entire life so that you can proudly conquer terrain and obstacles other people can only wish of surmounting in their wildest dreams!!!

  6. Richard, your sarcasm and time spent on a site that you seemingly despise is remarkable. Cheers!

  7. well so Chinese won’t get hummer . That is good news in my opinion 🙂

  8. Brian, not sarcasm, this is how we talk in Canada, would you like me to send pictures of my HUMMER??? I have plenty even on my desk I can easily upload. I’ll even go outside now and take some fresh pictures if that will make you feel better with my camera. Sorry if you thought it was sarcasm, it was late when I typed it and I was running on emotion is why it might have come off as sarcasm. I check this site daily, I would not be here if I hated HUMMER, I never checked a Smart car site in my life besides reading they are very dangerous in accidents!!! I don’t hang out in places I hate. Besides, do you really think a hater could make up a story like that? Only real drivers with wheel time would be able to say what I said above. However no problem, I’m sure you’re stressed out and no hard feelings. Peace from Canada to you my friend, always believe in HUMMER!!!

    Let me know how to upload some pics, I’ll do whatever I can to show my support!!! I put a lot of money in my HUMMER for a push bar, many chrome parts, Corse exhaust, light bar, custom paint, tonneau cover, duel headrest DVD and more and not very many people get to see it where I live, maybe this is my chance to make my HUMMER famous. I have about 2 weeks of body shop time logged and bills to prove it!!! This may or may not be true, but according to the person I bought my HUMMER from it was previously owned by Chuck Norris in San Antonia, Texas and was used to bring water to his cabin because I guess in Texas they don’t have wells in some areas? Whether or not that is true, I don’t care, I still LOVE my HUMMER!!!

    Talk soon!!!

  9. Good to hear Richard! Now get rid of those chrome parts, that part of the reason HUMMER is in the mess its in. Less bling, more off road.

  10. @Hellbound13 I meant to say stainless steel parts. As you can imagine rust is a very serious factor up here in Canada with all the salt we have. My bottom toe hooks rusted so I put stainless steel hooks instead. The rest of the stainless steel was on it when I bought it and I do not have the old original parts since they were not included in the sale.

    I for sure am going for an off road look, I don’t have any 20 plus inch wheels on my HUMMER, they are the 17 inch size, although they are chrome but that’s how they came from the factory. I have brand new tires, BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO (On-/Off-Road All-Terrain). I am thinking about lifting my HUMMER and trying a 37 inch tire, but I’m going to wait till my 35 inch tires wear down a little more first.

    My light bar came with blue bulbs, so I also swapped out my headlights and fog lights with PIAA blue bulbs, I can see further on road and off, so it was a good investment. I also have PIAA wipers and they seem to do a better job of keeping my windshield clear in the cold Canadian climate.

    Have an excellent day!!!

  11. So when are you guys planning to start the Hummer convoys like the Saab guys did? It might get some attention.

  12. What I wanna know is how I can change my avatar like Jeff did?

  13. I think hummers are great .And GM screwed up two years ago saying they where thinking about selling the brand .HUMMER IS SUCH A GREAT VEHICLE AND AN AMERICAN ICON THAT I HOPE THEY PULL THROUGH SOME HOW.

  14. @Panama Red To get a pretty avatar like Jeff did, simply visit http://en.gravatar.com and register a FREE account, it’s just that easy. Please note you have to upload your own picture as they don’t have any there for you. However logically you should upload a picture of your HUMMER like I did for best results, that way we can all see your beautiful HUMMER!!!

    You might be wondering how a 4th generation farmer knows all this stuff, well although I am a farmer and reside on a farm at this very moment, I’m also a full time web designer. The farming is just a hobby for me now. All the barns are empty but we still cut hey in the spring and sell it to folks who have horses because we don’t want the fields to grow up in bushes, etc. How I found out it was gravatar.com was simply by right clicking on this page, left clicking on view source code then reading Jeff’s post to find he is using gravatar.com. I then registered an account of my very own so I could finally get a picture of my HUMMER online for all to see!!! I hope you all like the angle, it’s of the grill, my grill didn’t fit in the width of the picture unfortunately because my HUMMER is so wide, I should have taken the picture standing further back, so maybe in the spring I’ll go outside and take a new picture when the weather is nicer because right now all you’ll see is snow and ice.

    I discovered this blog Brian operates is powered by wordpress, I’m not sure if wordpress has a social function or not as I never had time to read up on it, but it would be nice to create our own virtual garages so we can upload pictures of our cars, etc so that our online friends can see our rides. If not, I’m sure wordpress has a suggestion area so that such a feature could be added in the near future.

    Please note, to make your avatar photo retrospective of all your previous posts here at hummerguy.net, you must use the same email address you used here at hummerguy.net when creating your gravatar.com account. If not your avatar will not be visible because your email address is used to identify you in the wordpress and gravatar database okay, thus your email address must matchup in the database in order for your avatar to be visible here at hummerguy.net. Hope that advice saves you some possible frustration as I want this to go very smoothly for all.

    By following my advice you should now have an avatar picture of your HUMMER!!! Always believe in HUMMER!!!

  15. @Panama Red

    Me too.

  16. @HA_VT To setup your avatar, please read my post above, you just missed my post I see by three minutes is all. Hopefully you checked back since then and seen my post on how to setup your avatar.

  17. You may also want to know how to get your name in orange colour letters so that you have more web presence here at hummerguy.net. To do this, simply list your website address such as your facebook page, twitter page, youtube.com page, godaddy.com website, etc. Since I don’t have a lot of time for websites as I’m too busy building them, I’ll simply list the HUMMER Canada website because I live in Canada as the URL for my name here at hummerguy.net.

    By following my advice you should now have your name in orange colour letters for maximum impact in all of your posts!!! Always believe in HUMMER!!!

  18. @Jeff If Brain can put something together such as a list of cities worldwide and locations to meet at as well as when the rallies are going to take place that would be fantastic!!! I am available in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada and will ride out immediately the second you let me know when these events are taking place!!! I also volunteer to be captain of the Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada rally!!!

    HUMMERs look amazing individually, however when you put them together in a group it is the most wonderful thing I can think of. For example, I seen a yellow H1 and H3 the other day but we were all moving in different directions. These are people who LOVE their HUMMERs and would be proud to rally up and support their vehicles by forming a convoy unlike anything this city has ever experienced before!!!

    I agree!!! Worldwide HUMMER rallies would certainly wake people up!!! This is exactly one of the things we need ASAP!!!

    Perhaps we start this Saturday, March 6th at around 1:00 PM? What we need is a list of cities and locations to meet at. Then we can release wave after wave of HUMMER rallies worldwide based on time zones!!! Every one hour a new wave of HUMMERs move forward over a 24 hour period for total world coverage!!! We will keep sending waves and waves of HUMMERs every Saturday until this sale goes through!!! I am in this 100%!!! Let’s get the logistics sorted out now and I’ll be ready to do my part for sure!!!

  19. Great news team, as you know being able to express yourself is very important to HUMMER owners, so when I discovered Brian’s blog did not have smilies, I decided to make a list of all the current smilies wordpress currently offers including their codes so that you can now add smilies to your posts!!!

    Simply remove the left and right quotation marks and enjoy making smilies of your very own for now on!!!

    1. “:)” or “:smile:” = 🙂
    2. “:D” or “:grin:” = 😀
    3. “:(” or “:sad:” = 🙁
    4. “:o” or “:eek:” = 😮
    5. “8O” or “:shock:” = 😯
    6. “:?” or “:???:” = 😕
    7. “8)” or “:cool:” = 8)
    8. “:x” or “:mad:” = 😡
    9. “:P” or “:razz:” = 😛
    10. “:|” or “:neutral:” = 😐
    11. “;)” or “:wink:” = 😉
    12. “:lol:” = 😆
    13. “:oops:” = 😳
    14. “:cry:” = 😥
    15. “:evil:” = 👿
    16. “:twisted:” = 😈
    17. “:roll:” = 🙄
    18. “:!:” = ❗
    19. “:?:” = ❓
    20. “:idea:” = 💡
    21. “:arrow:” = ➡
    22. “:mrgreen:” = :mrgreen:

    Source: http://en.support.wordpress.com/smilies/

    Enjoy!!! 😀

  20. Okay guys, I stayed up all night and thought about how to organize the HUMMER rallies country to country, state to state and city to city.

    Basically we make a list of each country and then we put the states of each country in to a sub-forum, then the cities of each state in to yet another sub-forum.

    We will appoint captains for each city to organize their rallies.

    The thing is this will need to be programmed in rather short order, I don’t know if Brian is a good website programmer or not? But I do have some advice. I found a popular website using wordpress and vbulletin together. The reason we need to use vbulletin too at hummerguy.net is so that we can categorize all of the locations and talk to the people who are attending events, schedule meet up locations and times, etc.

    Here’s the link to the sample site which already is doing what we need to be doing now and is very easy to copy for our own needs: http://www.camaro5.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=14 Notice at the top there is a link called: “California Meets and Events.” We need to do the same thing basically as that for our forum.

    Here is a link to their software source which makes their forum work: http://www.vbulletin.com/

    I just hope Brian can set this up very quickly, if not many programmers can easily set this up real fast especially since they have the camaro5.com website model to follow which makes it even easier. If money is an issue perhaps Brian could setup a PayPal and community members here at hummerguy.net could chip in to help with the cost of the software and setup so that we can organize our worldwide events efficiently.

    If anybody else can offer a better solution then please let us know, if not I suggest we move forward with this plan of action assuming Brian is in on it since it is his website after all. I will check back tomorrow to see what was decided and if I can offer any further assistance. 💡

  21. Richard – there are lots of HUMMER forums that do exactly what you’re looking for – organize events, have local leadership. If you Google “Hummer Forums” and most of the main ones are all on the first page.

  22. I say we sell Richard to the Chinese!

  23. proudtobeamerican

    I love my Hummer – I can not tell you how many times I have said that in the last year & 1/2. Oh – I have never loved a vehicle. I usually say cars are “pretty”, drives my son crazy. Well my Hummer is awesome. The feel of the vehicle, the power driving in the snow. It is a Hummer.

    I didn’t want Hummer to go to the Chinese. There is only one true American car company, I wish they or some other Americans would step up. I have not been on any road rallies, but am planning on this summer. Hummer owners are passionate about their vehicles. Each of my grown kids would trade me cars in a second. If I won the lotto, each of them would get a Hummer. We have hopes to be a Hummer family some day.

    Actually before I got the vehicle, my dad tried to talk me out of it. I would have been turing heads where ever I went if I bought a sophisticated vehicle he told me. He went on a test drive with me, and realized it was Hummer all the way. Well let me tell you, everywhere I go,the guys all know which gal drove the Hummer.

  24. Okay guys, I went to work on Brian’s suggestion, I Googled the top 10 HUMMER forums, two were duplicates so what I did was I made a list of the top eight HUMMER forums and the supporting data I found for each one. Please note some data is subject to error, although not likely.

    What you find after reading the data is that hummerguy.net is by far and away the leader in all that is HUMMER and here are my conclusions regarding organizing global events at hummerguy.net:

    a) Based on research all other forums fall flat, see research below and feel free to double check it all if you so wish.

    b) Due to the fact hummerguy.net is in such a lead on the worldwide web, logic would dictate that we need our global operations or primary headquarters here because this website is the most popular, in other words the most relevant.

    c) Based on other successful websites, people do NOT want to go to several or more websites to get information, they want ONE central point of access for all that is HUMMER, in other words they want hummerguy.net.

    Thus my suggestion is we move forward immediately with my original plan of action which is to turn hummerguy.net in to a worldwide centralized point of access for all that is HUMMER. There are many software programs one can use to build the centralized point of access so that we can have our global command post here. A FREE program I found which might be as good as or better than vbulletin is: http://www.ning.com/ which allows you to build your own groups domestically on your own website unlike foreign entities such as facebook and the likes.

    Okay, here is the supporting information below to back up my claims above:

    hummerguy.net | Alexa rank (lower is better: winner): 347,952 | Total meet up threads: pending approval by Brian

    hummerforums.com | Alexa rank (lower is better): too high, no rank found | Total meet up threads: less than a half dozen

    elcovaforums.com | Alexa rank (lower is better): too high, no rank found | Total meet up threads: none found

    hummerforum.org | Alexa rank (lower is better): 4,006,608 | Total meet up threads: none found

    hummerxclub.com | Alexa rank (lower is better): 1,313,512 | 2010 Meet up threads: 10

    hummernetworkforums.com | Alexa rank (lower is better): too high, no rank found | Total meet up threads: none found

    h2fanatic.com | Alexa rank (lower is better): too high, no rank found | Total meet up threads: none found

    hummerhummer.com | Alexa rank (lower is better): too high, no rank found | Total meet up threads: none found

    forum.canadianhummersource.com | Alexa rank (lower is better): too high, no rank found | Total meet up threads: none found

    Let’s hope Brian will build our command post for us here, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he will. Not to mention Brian can make some sweet money on display ads from online retailers if he owns the largest HUMMER site in the world because the higher your alexa.com rank is, the more money you can charge from advertisers. And God knows I bought a lot of HUMMER parts over the years, so this is very rich ground for advertisers to display their display ads at. :mrgreen:

  25. Hummer better stop dancing around and get a deal done now. SAAB had a new buyer on line within a week. Hummer wasted time with China. The longer it takes the more bashing the brand takes and it will finally get killed by the delay in the deal. Hummer is a great brand and needs to keep going. I am fully behind the brand. I am just not sure Taylor and his team have the juice to make a deal.

  26. I still believe the brand can fit and can work on its own. I own an H1 and an H2 and drive them every day. Size is not an issue with me. As a Hummer owner and an enthusiast all I have to say is “GET THE DEAL DONE ALREADY!”

  27. They now have until May until they make a decision.

  28. I had my HUMMER out today, it was AWESOME!!! The wheels were frozen to the ground in my driveway because we had an ice storm so when I gave it the gas it said on the DIC display that “traction is activated” or something like that, I didn’t write the exact message down, but all of a sudden there were big sounds like a boat twisting and the HUMMER came free after I gave it some gas!!! My other car stays in the garage, I’d put the HUMMER in too but she won’t fit, but oh well, it’s not so bad although I would like to keep her covered up. I’m getting a new house soon with a bigger garage to put her in so it will be okay soon.

    Anyways, so I went for a drive on some back roads, she cut through the snow like nothing. Went over some bumps with ease, jolted my dash a little as they were frozen holes, but that’s what she’s made for, I can’t let the gas off or I might get stuck, as it’s pure ice in some spots which will make all four wheels spin unless I put some gravel under my wheels, but when there is only ice on the road it’s sometimes hard to find gravel for your wheels.

    Then after I got done driving in the back roads I got out on to the highway, I had a little shake in my steering wheel, I think due to the ice as my wheels were frozen, the rubber that is. But once my wheels started to heat up from driving on pavement the shaking quickly went away once my wheels turned to true circles again. Needless to say I had a ton of looks driving, everybody looks, regardless of if you’re driving a Chevy 1500 to 3500 or Ford F150 to F350 all the people check me out. Of course sometimes the little Honda guys give my looks, but too bad for them, I had to work to get my HUMMER but there are always people like that in the world we live in that are jealous of people’s success in life.

    Okay, just wanted everybody to know I’m doing good and still thinking positive for sure!!! :mrgreen:

  29. Any new update. Its been like two weeks hasn’t it?

  30. I know. With Saab there was constant updates, with Hummer I feel like I’m in the Dark.

  31. Hey guys, I’d post an update in a heartbeat if I had one to post that is. I’m sure Brian will post one soon because we are all counting on Brian to get us through this with some hair still left on our heads.

    A possible suggestion is Brian makes an area for Jim and his team to post updates to on their own, I believe the ning.com software I mentioned above has such ability, Brian could name it Corporate HUMMER group, etc.

    That way we can all check in for updates like how I do several times per day at this blog, might encourage a faster sale too if other buyers see all the competition there is to buy the brand, they might not beat around the bush so long to sign a final deal in to effect.

    Plus like I said before, Brian can make some very serious money on advertising because I think these Google ads send 100% of the revenue to wordpress, however if Brian had his own site he could put up display ads which will make him way more money than Google ads since Google only gives a little money back, but if Brian did it himself he could keep 100% of the money!!! Then Brian could buy a new 2011 HUMMER with cash money when they come out this fall after a successful sale of the HUMMER brand takes place shortly, it’s just that easy!!!

    Hope that helps guys, this plan should keep us in the loop better and keep Brian profitable during this transition period, always believe in HUMMER!!! 😎

  32. California Prince

    @Every Hummer fan:
    Save the hummer brand and join this important discussion:
    https://www.hummerguy.net/hummer-news/gm-still-evaluating-two-offers-for-hummer-brand/comment-page-1#comment-204621

    Thank you!