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March 31, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:26
March 31, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Hiya folks, great to have you with us.
Rush Limbaugh executing assigned host duties flawlessly with zero mistakes.
It's great to have you here as I, a highly trained broadcast specialist, meet and surpass all audience expectations each and every day.
Telephone number if you want to join us, and we're going to get the phone calls El Quicko in this hour.
800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
Ed Begley Jr., the noted automobile expert and part-time actor in Hollywood, was on Larry King Live last night and said, among other things, look, and it's good we're going to get rid of these big cars and trucks.
We just have to get rid of these SUVs and so forth.
General Motors is in bad shape and Toyota's doing it better because they got the Prius.
Now, Ed, Prius hybrids have become a drag on practically everybody that makes them, particularly Toyota.
But that won't be for long because the Obama administration is going to get rid of a bunch of lines that are very profitable at General Motors.
20 vehicles they make show a profit.
11 of them are cars or SUVs and trucks.
Now let me ask you people a quick question.
How many of you know what it was that led the automobile industry to invent, quote unquote, the SUV, the sport utility vehicle?
Brian, you got any idea?
None whatsoever.
Dawn, do you have any idea what it was?
First time I've laughed all day.
Thank you.
Second time I've laughed all day.
The SUV was crazy because it looks more masculine than what?
Than a minivan.
No, actually what led, ladies and gentlemen, to the invention of the SUV was the noted cafe standards, the corporate average fuel economy standards.
Automobile manufacturers have to have their entire fleet meet an average miles per gallon emissions, all that sort of stuff.
However, when the first cafe standards were written by the wizards of Smart in Congress, light trucks and trucks were exempted.
And so the automobile manufacturers, to avoid cafe standards, simply put five seats instead of two on a truck chassis.
And they put a body up there that made it look like it was a car leading to the sport utility vehicle.
It was exactly how entrepreneurs escape and get around onerous government regulations.
Give you another example of how this happens.
Back in the early 70s, when Richard Nixon was president, we had, what, 3% inflation, and unemployment was around 5 or 6%, Nixon panicked and instituted wage and price controls.
Now, these never work.
The wage controls do because management loves to say, hey, I'd love to give you a raise.
The government says I can't.
But the way that preferred employees were given pay increases was to change their compensation from wages to bonuses.
So this is how management took care of itself and its preferred employees.
On the price side, yes, price controls were put into place.
So everybody thought they're going to be able to go to grocery store, and prices were not going to rise.
I think there was a, I'm not quite sure, but I think there was an allowable one and a half or whatever inflation rise allowed, but no direct price increase above the rate of inflation.
And I'm not even sure about that.
So if you'd go to the, let's say, go to the butcher section of your local supermarket, they have various cuts of beef, as you well know.
Well, all of a sudden, all they had to do was invent a new cut, like the quadruple double ribeye.
And they could charge for it whatever they wanted because it was not subject to price controls because it didn't exist when the price controls were put in place.
Wage and price controls never work.
The cafe standards were simply onerous and the automobile manufacturers found a way around them.
And so government didn't like that.
When Barney Frank and his ilk found out they had been outsmarted, then the cafe standards eventually began to apply.
And then the PR campaign against the SUV kicked into high gear with the Sierra Club starting in about 1995 or 1997.
And we are where we are today, where 11 of the 20 most profitable vehicles GM makes are SUVs and trucks.
And the Obama administration says they have got to go.
What's the question, Mr. Snerdley?
Mm-hmm.
I know I mentioned this in the first hour.
I warn, I remind people this all the time.
When the Sierra Club first started targeting the SUV, Carl Pope, that's right, at the Sierra Club, and I warned you people what was going to happen, where this was going to lead.
And everybody, oh, you're overreacting.
They're just a bunch of environmentalists.
And all they do, they just care about the planet rush.
There's nothing wrong.
They are liberals and they are going to, if they can, dictate to all of us how we should live.
And we should live the way they say we should.
Now, as for Snerdley and his profound disagreement with my analysis of the G20 just before the previous hour ended, let me go through this again for you because the drive-by media, both here and across the pond, mostly across the pond, is reporting big troubles for Obama.
Angela Merkel doesn't want any part of a global New Deal and she shut it down, thereby thwarting the efforts of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Gordon Brown, to have massive worldwide tax increases.
The French president, Sarkozy, he's threatening to walk out.
But the British press, the UK press, Financial Times, all of them, have stories of one degree or another that discuss just what a snake pit Obama's stepping into there.
In fact, they've even got stories.
He was once popular, but no more.
He doesn't have the aura.
He's not getting off Air Force One with the magical aura that he had when he spoke in Berlin during the campaign.
And I sit there, I look at this stuff, and I listen to some people.
It's very seductive not to accept it.
I mean, or to accept it.
Because that's what we want to hear.
A lot of people in our side want to hear that the bloom is off the road when it comes to Obama.
But then common sense sets in, and you realize that world leaders don't go into situations like this without the agenda pretty much being mapped out, the conclusion pretty much being done, and the mission accomplishment statement almost always totally having been written.
Now, there's always the chance that some, I mean, you've got 20 leaders over there, and half of them are insane.
So there's always a chance that a couple of them will go off the reservation.
So it's not totally etched and stone, but big meetings like this.
I mean, can you think of a G7 or a G8 in your life where the report at the end of it called it an utter failure, a total disappointment?
I mean, there's no such thing, right?
In fact, you don't even remember.
I'll bet most of you don't remember what came out of any G7 meeting or G8 meeting.
You're living the results of it, but you don't remember what happened to it.
You don't remember what was said, but you're living the tyranny that comes out of these kind of things.
Snerdley disagreed profoundly with me when I said Obama wouldn't even be bothering to go if he wasn't going to come out of this smelling like a rose.
And he started telling me, look, Rush, what you got, you're forgetting.
I mean, the world economy is in a tank.
It's worse than ours, and they blame America.
You can hear it when Angela Merkel talks, you can hear it.
When Gordon Brown talks, you can hear it.
When half of the European Union talks, you can hear it.
When Sarkozy talks, when the Russians talk, they're blaming us.
To which I said, and how does that differ from Obama?
One sentence shamed Snerdley into realizing that he too had been seduced by a media reporting stories he wants to be true.
All Obama's got to do over to go over and take the blame.
Not take the blame, agree with them and blame Bush.
All he's got to do is, yes, our country has been excessive.
Yes, our country has overstepped its bounds.
Yes, our country is tortured.
Yes, our country has exceeded our authority.
Yes, but it's a new day.
We love Obama.
I guarantee, folks, if you think this guy is going to go over there and be shamed and embarrassed and have his hat handed to him by these people, you've got another thing.
It's going to be, in all likelihood, the exact opposite.
He's going to be the world's new hero, and he will accomplish it by agreeing with those who blame the United States for the global meltdown.
Because all he's got to do is say, yeah, you know, I inherited it too.
I'm with you.
We're doing everything we can to fix this.
I think you'll have to agree that my policy is here to take over the automobile.
And they're going to love that.
These guys are going to love the fact Germany doesn't.
Merkel said we don't want anything to do with running the automobile industry in Germany.
Why would they?
The German automobile industry, last I looked, is doing okay.
Anyway, a brief time out here, folks.
We'll be back.
We'll start with your phone calls after this.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, with half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
And as promised to the phones, Fort Myers, Florida, this is Trevor.
Thank you for waiting, sir.
You're next.
Hello, Rush.
I just wanted to say that the president is hired by the people.
We, the people, elected him.
And for him to start going around and firing civilian CEOs or whomever is just wrong.
I mean, I think he's in the White House because we allow him to be there.
We elected him to be there in the White House.
And my second point is, I'm on my sixth suburb.
If I may interrupt.
Sure.
May I ask your age?
You don't have to.
I'm 56.
56?
56?
You sound like you could be in your 20s, which is why I asked.
Okay, what's your second point?
My second point is I'm on my sixth suburban, and they're great.
I'm planning on buying a Prius, by the way, a black Prius, so that I can have both, and I will decide when I drive the Prius, and I'll decide when I drive the suburban, and that's real freedom.
Okay.
I mean, if you want to buy a Prius, feel free.
How many family members do you cart around on your SUV?
A variety.
I mean, sometimes it's just my wife and myself.
Many times, though, Rush, it's just myself.
All right, so why are you going to get a Prius?
Well, I'm going to get a Prius because there's two reasons.
One is the price of gas was $4, and I'd like to just save money.
That's nothing wrong with that.
Did you check the price of a Prius?
You ought to do a cost-benefit analysis and find out how much a Prius costs over a similar car in size and weight with a standard fuel combustion engine that gets just a few miles per gallon less than the Prius.
Find out you're going to be paying thousands of dollars more, and then ask yourself how many years you're going to have to own the thing to make up the difference.
You need to do that.
You do.
Now, as we elected the president, and he's firing CEOs, yeah, we did, and apparently, every damn one of them that voted for him thinks it's a great deal.
In fact, I had the story in the first hour.
Union people in Detroit are very upset.
They think Obama's hitting their industry harder than he hit Wall Street.
And Bob Passani at CNBC, and I think he's got a point that says, look for some bank CEOs to get fired next.
You know, it's just, it's fascinating to listen to people with the junior high school understanding of civics, you know, 101.
Well, we, and I don't mean that as an insult.
Please don't misunderstand.
We elect the president.
He can't go around firing people.
Oh, yeah.
Who's to stop him?
Somebody tell me who's going to stop this.
You know what the chairman of the Republican National Committee is out there talking about?
All his partying days.
Steele's out there talking about his raucous partying days on the same day that the president fires the CEO of General Motors.
Anyway, thanks for the call out there, Trevor.
Knoxville, Tennessee.
Steve, great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, how are you today?
Good.
Thank you.
It is an absolute honor to talk to you.
I'll get straight to my point.
Listen, I'm blown away at the fact that we're not hearing more, or for that matter, I don't think I've really heard anything in depth on what I consider to be the fundamental problem in the auto industry, which is the unions.
It seems that the unions have grabbed hold of that industry and are bringing it down and doing more damage to it than anything else I can think of.
Well, you're not alone.
I mean, people have called here and expressed that sentiment for quite a long period of time.
However, the auto companies made these deals with them.
They made the deals on the pensions and the health care until you die.
And there are a lot of people at General Motors who are making more in their retirement than they ever made when they worked there.
But management made the deals.
Well, it seems that Obama's willing to have the tough conversation with everybody, with the exception of the unions.
Of course, his payback for the unions.
Of course.
The union's going to end up a significant membership of the board of directors of General Motors, probably.
I mean, this is giant payback for the unions supporting him and the Democrat Party.
There's no question that's what this is.
So doesn't there need to be some sort of don't the unions need to give a little bit to help this situation?
Well, some United Auto Workers people are losing their jobs, and the new CEO of General Motors, Fitzwhatever, said that they're going to have to close some plants, more plants.
GM is shutting down plants.
When you get candid General Motors, you still get paid for a while.
Right.
But no, I mean, the whole point here is that when it comes to unions, the workers are not going to make any concessions.
The Obama's administration is not going to insist on it.
You have to understand this is all done according to a principle Obama believes, and that is his presidency is about returning the nation's wealth to its rightful owners.
And members of unions have been screwed by the likes of Rick Wagner and Lee Ircoca and all these management people for decades.
The unions are the ones that build the cars.
The unions are the ones that put them together.
The unions are the ones working sweat labor.
They should be getting $20 million retirement package.
That's what guides Obama.
They've been shafted for as long as they've been union members.
They've been shafted for as long as they've been working on the assembly line.
This for Obama and liberalism in general is decades and decades and decades of payback.
And there's nothing to stop it.
You hear any opposition to it anywhere?
I mean, the Hill even has a news story that Obama didn't even consult Congress on.
And he just called Carl Levin and his brother Sander Levin, who's a member of Congress, and Debbie Stabenow.
And Carl Levin said, ah, this is very sad.
And that was it.
You imagine George W. Bush called Carl Levin, Senator from Bush.
Hey, we're firing Rick Wagner today.
We're taking over the company.
I think all Carl Levin would say, oh, that's sad.
Lori in Jacksonville, Florida.
Lori is one of my all-time top 10 female names.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Thank you, Rush.
Thank you for taking my call.
I drive a Chevy Corvette, and I've worked long and hard to be able to afford to do so.
And if we're talking about everybody driving the same sort of car, I don't feel like I should be forced into driving a Prius or a Cobalt or a Focus or anything of that ilk.
And what really upsets me is I take a lot of heat for the fact that I drive a Corvette.
Who gives you the heat?
Well, other people that feel like they feel like I think I'm better than they are.
Your neighbors?
Your neighbors?
Not so much my neighbors.
More people I work with.
Okay, but people in town.
People in general, yeah.
Did they give you grief for driving a Corvette because it's a gas hog and you're polluting the planet, too?
That as well.
But, you know, I kind of feel like I've paid my fair share, if that's you want to say.
You have been stigmatized, and you have been stigmatized on purpose.
You have been made a target on purpose.
But, Rush, when I bought this car, I paid more for it.
I paid their gas guzzler tax or whatever specious name they want to call it.
I pay more for maintenance.
I paid more for gas.
When gas was over $4 a gallon, I was paying almost $5 a gallon because I put 93 in my car.
It's all it will take.
So, you know, I feel like I am paying my fair share for my, you know, lack of concern for the global warming.
No, no, you're missing whatever.
You're missing the point in the era of Obama.
Unfortunately, I'm beginning to understand the era of Obama even more and more every day.
The point is that it is not only unfair that you have a vet, it's immoral.
And you shouldn't be allowed because you can afford this.
It's not fair you can afford all that when others can't.
A little pot-belly dictator in North Korea, Kim Jong-il, claims they're going to launch some sort of a missile.
Our intelligence tells us this missile is going to be launched between April 4th and April 8th.
The Japanese are going on alert status.
They may fire interceptor missiles at it.
The Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Japan has every right to defend itself.
Apparently, the North Korean missile can hit Hawaii if they aim it right, and if it goes where they say it's going to aim or where they're going to aim it.
And there's controversy over whether it's a dummy, whether it's got some kind of a warhead of some kind on it, whether they say it's just an exploration launch, a satellite exploration launch.
Along these lines, the little pot-dellied dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, asked for a few periods, few seconds, few moments on this program to address our nation.
And now, a brief but loud communique from the dear leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il.
Greetings and salutations to the new but badly flawed Obama administration.
Already the thin shoulders of your messiah are buckling under the weight of responsibility to build a socialist people's paradise in his first 100 days.
A truly strong president, similar to myself, would do this in one day.
No 30 or 60 days for a company to submit to me.
I would just confiscate the wealth and burn the factory to the ground the same day.
And I had such high hopes for you in the beginning.
You are weak.
And who is this dragon lady you send to lurk at my door?
Where is the ever-sexy Marla Albright, best midnight basketball forward in all of North Korea?
Only she can attempt to stop our launch of the new Bang Pen rocket into space with a peaceful satellite greater than even Sputnik.
But before warning, this new advanced rocket powered by dungas and wood shaping will emit a very large cloud of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, warming your side of the earth in the extreme.
But we will consider delaying our launch if certain gifts are forthcoming.
Such as pole dancing exercise equipment, complete with instructions and correct format DVD.
Unlike what you sent the British Prime Minister, then we may also engage in talks.
But under no circumstances will President Obama be allowed to visit our country since the North Korean people already have the one and only savior messiah, Kim Jong-il.
That is all.
So a special message for America via the EIB network from Kim Jong-il, the pot-bellied dictator of North Korea.
By the way, a message to Laurie.
She was in Jacksonville.
Is that where she's?
Lori, I didn't mean to be flip.
I know when people call and talk about this things, the kind of things, she drives a Corvette and she's being stigmatized.
People are saying, you shouldn't be driving that.
Do you know how much gasoline you're wasting and all this sort of stuff?
She's finally starting to see what the era of Obama is all about.
Laurie, it's not just that it's a gas hog and this sort of thing, as you said, it's that you have it.
And there are people who for years have been stirring up the kind of resentment and envy for people.
As you said, you saved the money, you paid for it, you pay the gas guzzler tax, you pay for the gasoline, you were paying five bucks a gallon because you got to use super duper high octane in that engine.
And she's still being stigmatized.
I'd drive around in that car a few years if I were you, and I'd have the biggest smile on my face every time I got in it and let anybody who tells you one thing, don't even argue with them, just smile.
Just smile.
Offer them a ride.
Just smile at them.
Who's next?
This is Matthew, Sacramento, my adopted hometown.
Hello, Matthew.
Wow.
Honored to talk to you.
Short-time liberal, long-time conservative.
How's it going?
Great.
What happened to the fuel economy of the past?
We used to have economic cars that were an option.
We don't even have that option now.
The most fuel-efficient car besides the hybrid is about 35 miles per gallon and costs, you know, almost as much as the hybrid in the first place.
What happened to the Geo Metro, 40 miles a gallon, the Honda CRX, about 75 to 90 miles per gallon, depending on how you drove it.
And we don't even have that option anymore.
You're asking me what happened to the Honda CRX and the GE, the GE Metro, GM Metro.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I'm just going to take a flyer here.
Just going to take a wild guess.
Not enough people bought them.
Well, they're all over the place.
And I've got a Geo Metro, and you might enjoy this.
It gets about 40 miles a gallon.
And I have friends and a boss, which is the most dangerous territory there, that bought these little smart cars, and they've got a Prius.
And they paid, you know, $25,000, $30,000 for these cars.
I paid $1,000 for my GeoMetro, carries more stuff, and gets about the same mile per gallon.
Okay, well, let me try this answer.
You're describing cars here with tremendous gasoline mileage.
Your Geo Metro and the Honda, what is it, the CRX?
CRX, yeah.
What did you say?
You're talking 40, depending how you drive it, 40 all the way up to 80 miles per gallon in one of these cars.
Is that what you mean?
A CRX, yeah.
Well, I think the answer to your question may lie in the fact that they got too good a gas mileage because they raised the corporate fleet emission standards.
CAFE standards are put out by the government, and the government says your fleet has to meet these.
And when you've got a car in your fleet like the CRX or the GEO that just gets off the charts with good gas mileage, it causes, it could cause a problem on the lower end with the SUVs and some of these others.
So your culprit may be the cafe standards there again.
And I kind of thought about it.
I don't know that I've ever seen a Geo or a CRX.
They're very tiny.
You might have run one over in one of your vehicles.
Likely.
It's true.
How many people can fit in a CRX?
Oh, CR-X is worse.
You can really only fit about two people.
They say it's a four-seater, but it's really about a two-person car.
It's not much bigger than these little smart cars they have or a Tata Nano.
Yeah, yeah, I know what you're okay.
I've seen a smart, the little bubble cars.
There's some people around here taking them to the grocery store, which doesn't make any sense to me because there's no room for groceries in there.
But they still do it because I think people want to be seen.
I mean, even people here want to be seen driving around these little put-putt things so they can be appreciated as having social conscience.
Anyway, Matthew, thanks for the call.
And look, I know there's some of you in this audience, and I'll just acknowledge you.
Come on, Rush, tell the truth.
Big oil killed those cars.
Big oil did it.
Too much.
You know there are people who think that.
Here is George in Richmond, Virginia.
Hello, sir.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, Rush.
I'm kind of a GM fanatic, and I'm really a Chevy Cobalt fanatic.
And I resent the Corvette lady's comments about a cobalt.
A cobalt is really an opal Astra, which in Europe is a mid-sized car.
It's quite expensive, but they make it cheap in the U.S.
And we get a $15,000 cobalt in this country.
Then I get 40 miles to the gallon with my cobalt.
I've got over 200,000 miles on various cobalts, and I've yet to have one go in the shop with any defect.
A nephew of mine is the general manager of a large Chevrolet dealer in Salt Lake City, Utah, and he says they never have cobalts in the service carbohydrate.
They're so dependable, so solid with great German engineering, just as you drive, Rush, but at a bargain price.
Now, the Cobalt has an XFE model that gets 37 EPA highway, and you can get better than that if you drive sanely.
And a Corvette even will get 25 miles to the gallon with a stick shift.
We could solve our entire oil problem, Rush, if people would just rediscover the clutch.
If all those Camry and the cord drivers would dump the sissy stick transmission and get a stick shift, we would solve our oil problem right there.
But Americans are lazy, you know that.
Shut the tide.
I've heard everything now.
I love Cobalt.
Let me ask you a question.
Hey, Cobalt, you love the Cobalt.
Why don't more people have them?
Because General Motors and their infinite wisdom made it so cheap in this country that the interior is the grimmest, most ugly interior on any car sold in the United States.
A freaking Daewoo slash Chevy Avio has a better-looking interior than the Cobalt.
But the basic goodness is still there.
If you want to see what General Motors did to the Cobalt, go to the Saturn dealer and look at the Saturn Astra, which is the same basic car but made in Europe.
It's a lot nicer.
They brought it down to a price, but the basic goodness is there.
Like the Cobalt-SS is the best performance car for the money in the country, but it sometimes loses comparison tests just on the basis, as car and driver said, of its chintzy interior.
Why don't more people have them?
You say it's the interior and they're cheap.
And that's not the answer.
It's not the answer.
And I don't want to be misunderstood here.
You like your cobalts.
That's fabulous.
You like whatever car any of you have out there, you like it.
That's great.
I would never presume to tell you what car you have to drive.
Not in my nature.
The only thing I would say is, you know, don't be an idiot and buy a hybrid because you think you're saving the planet.
If you want a hybrid because you think you're going to save some gasoline and so forth, all well and good.
But don't get sucked in by this social do-gooder stuff.
You know, get the car you want.
And the cars and trucks that people want in this country are big.
That is why the GO doesn't sell great.
It's why the CRX says it's a limited market.
It's why Priuses have a limited market.
It's why, even when gasoline is $2.50 and $3 a gallon, people are buying SUVs, large cars and trucks.
They like them.
We are Americans.
We like our automobiles big.
They are safer.
We have families.
They're easily to transport the families around in.
It's just that simple.
But see, now our freedom, our liberty and freedom to have the kinds of car we want is being attacked because we're being told by the central planners, the statist tyranny, cloud and crowned Washington, that our choices are wrong.
They're not good for the country, not good for the planet, and that we have no right to drive things these days.
We're going to have the size of our automobiles dictated to us.
And the first steps of this, well, actually, first steps of this took place many, many years ago.
We're now getting to the culmination of it.
What with the election of Obama?
Quick timeout.
More straight ahead right after this.
I mentioned this earlier.
Here are the details, and it's from the New York Times.
It's a story about Hummers in Iraq.
Free markets and free people at work in Iraq.
Mission accomplished.
We install a free market and a free people.
And free people buy what they want.
Iraqis love Hummers because they're a symbol of power, said Mr. Hill, a chubby 37-year-old who couldn't stop laughing.
Hummers in Baghdad are symbols of much more besides, increasing security, returning normalcy, and a yearning for the trappings of sovereignty.
That's what a Hummer represents to Iraqis.
It helped that we didn't have such a bad opinion of the Americans in one of the provinces, said Ali Al-Hille.
People often asked the soldiers to stop their Humvees so they could get their pictures taken in front of them.
Soon conditions improved enough to drive all over the city.
Hummer H3s began rumbling off the lot at $50,000 to $60,000 a piece in dollars and all the money down fully loaded.
No one wanted them any other way.
No Iraqis wanted a bargain basement Hummer.
They wanted them fully loaded.
Iraqis are currently paying historically high prices for gasoline.
At $1.40 a gallon, that wouldn't break any Americans' hearts.
But not long ago in Iraq, it was 19 cents a gallon.
It's now $1.40.
The increase had no effect on sales of Hummers.
If you can afford this car, you don't care how much gasoline costs, said Mr. Hilly.
Iraqis love their cars.
In Iraq, people judge you by your car, and you're not a man without one.
When it comes to Hummers, they'll always nearly be bigger than anybody else's car.
Now, I have another story here out of St. Louis, Chesterfield, Missouri, near St. Louis.
And it is just the New York Times as well.
I think.
A dealer's big bet is on the line as Hummer falls from favor.
And remember, you just heard about the Hummer.
Iraqis love it.
And they're buying them as fast as they can at full price and fully loaded.
In a nation that is just emerging from the seventh century, thanks to us.
And the people over there are buying Hummers, and they're excited.
And here in the world's greatest superpower, the greatest outpost for freedom ever in the world, the same automobile is being tarred, feathered, and destroyed by the Obama administration and the American left.
In 2005, Jim Lynch placed a big bet on a big vehicle.
He was already a successful Hummer dealer, but he spent $7.5 million on a new 34,000 square foot showroom in Chesterfield, suburb of St. Louis, says here, wealthy suburb.
He even turned 60 acres of Missouri River floodplain into a rough terrain test track with visions of people coming afar to try and buy a Hummer.
General Motors cheered him on, he says, telling him he could eventually sell as many as 1,300 Hummers a year, which started more than $30,000.
And if you get them fully loaded here, you can spend up to $100,000, not to mention the thousands that many owners spend on accessories.
He sold 70 new Hummers a month when he opened the store, but now sees only a handful of customers every month.
And that didn't even pay the interest on my inventory, he said.
Now I'm lying awake at night trying to think of what I can do with this big, beautiful building.
Sales of Hummers overall have fallen so far, 51% 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 today, in fact.
For Mr. Lynch and the 379 other Hummer dealers worldwide, however, it'd be a sudden end to a brand that once seemed to have a strong future.
Among its staunchest advocates was Bob Lutz.
GM's product development chief, who is retiring this year.
Shortly after joining GM in 2001, Lutz envisioned Hummer as a global brand that could challenge the rugged image of off-road supremacy of Chrysler's Jeep products.
I think Hummer has a lot more potential.
Even GM knows, Lutz said at the time.
It stands for something.
That's what people want.
But what Lutz didn't know is that this country would elect a president who looks at a Hummer and says, That's not what I want for anybody but me.
There was a lot of reason for optimism within the brand.
Anyway, Hummer about to go out of business in the United States.
They can't get enough of them in Iraq.
Now, something's not right about this.
Henry Waxman's just about finished his global warming energy bill, 648 pages, as the Democrats prepare to finish off what's left of the United States.
We'll be back.
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