GM Unveils Lower Cost Hummer Design

General Motors on Wednesday unveiled a new Hummer that is smaller, cheaper and less gas-hungry than its predecessors.

The new junior member of the Hummer family, to be called H3, is seen as critical to the survival of a brand that has been treading water this year as the novelty of the two-year-old Hummer H2 has faded.

The H3 is to hit showrooms next spring, a date that could not come soon enough for GM's 167 Hummer dealers, who are facing a sales slump at the same time they are spending millions of dollars to fulfill GM's requirement that Hummers be sold in huge glass and steel Quonset huts.

"The H3 makes that viable," said Jim Lynch, a Hummer dealer in the St. Louis, Missouri, area who is in the middle of building one of the new showrooms. He called the H3 an "extremely important" vehicle that gave Hummer dealers "the volume to really be a standalone franchise."

At a glance, H3 looks a lot like the Hummer H2, which has become an avatar of American swagger or sinfulness, depending upon whom you ask. But there are significant differences. The H3 is about 17 inches, or 43 centimeters, shorter than the H2, and about 6 inches less wide and tall.

The H3 is expected to approach 20 miles per gallon in highway driving and get about 16 miles per gallon in the city, a GM official said. That is better than the roughly 12 mile

more: iht.com/articles/2004/10/27/business/hummer.html (256)

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