Too big for its own good?

NEW YORK — One thing you can say about the Hummer, roaring down the road, towering over subcompacts like an NBA center in a sea of toddlers: It always drew a reaction.

The beefy, military-inspired SUV began as a macho icon for enthusiasts like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who campaigned for governor in a Hummer. For others it was a symbol of excess, environmental ruin and tackiness — a view that seemed to grow in direct proportion to gas prices and economic distress.

And now the brand is likely no more. General Motors Co. said last week that its bid to sell Hummer to a Chinese heavy equipment manufacturer collapsed.

Government regulators in Beijing failed to approve the sale and GM said it would have no choice but to let the brand die, 18 years after its first and most enormous model started lumbering off the assembly line.

“Finally,” said Ann Mesnikoff, director of the green transportation campaign at the Sierra Club in Washington. “The Hummer was the epitome of gas guzzling.”

Schwarzenegger, who was instrumental in popularizing the vehicle, had a much different reaction two decades ago when he first saw the Hummer's direct military ancestor. Then a body builder turned movie star, he was on his way to the set of “Kindergarten Cop” in Oregon when an Army convoy packed with Humvees thundered past.

“I put the brakes on,” Schwarzenegger said at the 1992 ceremony that AM General, besieged by requests, held to start production of civilian Hummers. “Someone smashed into the back of me, but I just stared. ‘Oh, my God, there is the vehicle,' I said. And from then on, I was possessed.”

Hummer's earliest predecessor was the jeep, the boxy multipurpose vehicle built in large numbers for the Army in World War II. The jeep evolved into the Humvee, which saw heavy action — and entered Americans' consciousness — during the Gulf War.

In the late 1990s, GM bought Hummer from AM General and began selling a smaller but still outsized model, the H2. Sales boomed after its 2005 introduction of an even smaller model, the H3, that was roughly equivalent in size to other automakers' full-size SUVs.

Hummer's image began to change as gas prices began creeping higher, the economy started to crack and the U.S. entered the most difficult period of the Iraq war. Sales, which peaked at 71,524 in 2006, plunged to just more than 9,000 vehicles in 2009. In January, GM sold just 265 Hummers in the United States.

The 2010 Hummer H3 gets up to 18 highway mpg, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fuel economy estimates. Nothing to brag about, but no worse than a 2010 Toyota Sequoia.

As for the H2 and H1, they are so heavy — more than 8,500 pounds — they have been exempt from federal fuel-efficiency rules. However, drivers typically reported getting around 10 mpg.

In time, even Schwarzenegger became critical of Hummer's gas-guzzling ways. Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said three of the California governor's four Hummers have been converted to alternative fuels: One runs on hydrogen, one on biodiesel, one on vegetable oil.

When Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machines Co., announced plans to buy Hummer last June, it knew it would have to make the vehicles more fuel efficient. It had plans to develop Hummers powered by alternative fuels, more efficient gas engines, six-speed transmissions and diesel engines.

The deal fell through because of resistance from Chinese regulators. Now, the only hope for Hummer's survival is for a last-minute investor to snap up the brand.

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