REPORT: Chinese Company Buying Hummer

According to the NYT, the entity GM's reached a preliminary agreement with to buy the Hummer brand is a random machinery company in western China with ambitions to become an automaker. We're hoping next on the ambition list isn't "take over USA with their own pseudo-military utility vehicles."

The NYT source is a person familiar with the Chinese government approval process who claims the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd., based in Chengdu, concluded the agreement with G.M.

Sichuan Tengzhong is a privately owned company, but Tuesday's deal required preliminary vetting by Beijing officials, who retain the right to veto any attempt at an overseas acquisition by a Chinese company and who give special attention to deals over $100 million.

Well, at least we now know it's probably a deal worth over $100 million.

We also expected it was probably a foreign company looking to buy Hummer, considering the news our friends at PickupTrucks.com reported earlier today that the deal prohibits the export of military technology of any sort with the buyer. So don't worry, your secret non-military but vital for Big Gulp cupholder technology won't compromise our national security.

But our biggest question is this — remember when we were on The Colbert Report last year? Remember the Hummer fans they visited? We wonder how many of them will be interested in buying a Hummer from a Chinese-owned company or will be slapping a "Better Red Than Dead" bumper sticker to the back of their current HumVee look-a-like? Probably not so many. [via NYT]

Send an email to Ray Wert, the author of this post, at ray@jalopnik.com.

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