Hummer's feeling a little misunderstood

DETROIT -- General Motors gm wants people to start thinking about Hummers as big old trucks built to do a job, instead of as gas-guzzling SUVs for the rich.

In the six years since GM rolled out the Hummer H2, the brand has become a lightning rod for environmentalists. Owners complain of finding their vehicles keyed in parking lots, being sneered at by neighbors and feeling as if the tide of green angst is being channeled in their direction.

A survey by J.D. Power and Associates last year said SUV buyers avoid the Hummer brand more than any other, mostly because they believe the trucks are gas guzzlers.

"Hummer has an image of being the big, ponderous vehicles," says Jon Osborn, research director at J.D. Power. "Really, it gets about the same or as good gas mileage as several other (SUVs). … The name Hummer connotes a much more gas-guzzling vehicle than really is on the road today."

In an attempt to deflect some of the criticism, Hummer stopped making the military-based, five-ton H1, and each new model — the H2 and H3 — has been lighter and more fuel-efficient. (The EPA rates the 5.3-liter-engine H3 at 14 miles per gallon, a comparable Chevy Suburban at 16 mpg in combined city-highway use.) Still, H3 designers intentionally maintained an intimidating look.

Mark LaNeve, vice president of sales, service and marketing for GM North America, says he'd love for consumers to begin thinking of Hummers as tools to get a job done. "No one criticizes a bulldozer for its gas mileage. That's because it's built to do a job."

Initial buzz was double-edged

Hummer's image always has been outsized in relation to the number on the road. GM has sold only a few more than 250,000 H2s and H3s since it took over the brand in 2002, compared with 760,000 Ford F-150 pickups sold just in 2007.

Yet Hummer's initial appeal fed today's image crisis. It drew wealthy baby boomers who wanted a big, strong SUV that attracted a lot of attention.

And attention it got.

Some was good: Trend-setting athletes and rappers were instantly drawn to the brand.

But some was bad. Like the attention Washington, D.C., resident Gareth Groves got in July when he parked his 2005 Hummer H2 outside his mom's house overnight. Masked vandals smashed the truck with a baseball bat, slashed the tires, and scratched "For the environ (sic)" in the side doors.

The story attracted national attention, and Groves says he still hears regularly from other Hummer owners who say they have to constantly fend off critics who say the truck is excessive.

"I've heard unbelievable stories from other Hummer owners," he says. He hesitates to let his widowed mom use it because he fears for her safety.

An image makeover, he says, "isn't a bad idea. … I don't know why it happened, but they kind of seem like the poster child for gas-guzzling SUVs."

Recent image marketing aims for something of a mix of hometown heroes and off-road work and fun.

"We really want to get Hummer out of the spotlight as being irresponsible and get it into an image of being purpose-built," LaNeve says. "It's never going to be a 60-mpg vehicle, but it's got a role."

Late last year, GM began airing ads that show other "tools" — firefighters' gear, a flare gun, a climbing rope — and then show a Hummer, which the ad says can scale 60-degree inclines. In another commercial, newspaper clippings about blizzards and floods dissolve into a Hummer forging through the disasters to help. Both ads end with the tag line: "Purpose built."

LaNeve also says Hummer will produce smaller and smaller versions of the truck, using the monikers H4 and so on for the new models. He says he can even envision one similar to a Jeep Wrangler: Hummer rolled out a concept of such a vehicle, the HX, at the Detroit auto show in January. There are plans for all Hummers to run on biofuels by 2010.

Some critics will never be appeased

Marketing the trucks as tough and for rugged activities is a good idea, says Jim Hall, managing director of auto consultancy 2953 Analytics. Hummer has become too polarizing and needs to regain cachet.

But promoting Hummers as off-road vehicles still won't win fans in the green movement, he predicts, and might further stir up environmentalists who don't want any machine trampling nature.

"It's the classic example of not being able to please everybody," Hall says. "There are going to be these guys who get angry because you're destroying the possibility of a snail surviving or some such thing. … If you're building automobiles, you're already on the wrong side" of the argument.