Beefy or tacky? Either way, Hummer's history

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 held photo ops in Hummers in his early days as governor. 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 Wednesday its bid to sell Hummer to a Chinese heavy equipment manufacturer had 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 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 U.S.

Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, said that just as the Hummer had cemented an image of military might combined with off-road brawn, changes in public sentiment turned SUVs "into tantamount to the creation of the devil himself."