Because They Don't Know The Words

The old joke asks, "Why does a hummingbird hum?" After many desperate attempts at arriving at some quality scientific explanation, you are supposed to say the punch line: "Because he doesn't know the words." Today, we can begin the creation of a new joke: "Why did General Motors stop making Hummers?" Perhaps the answer is this: "They couldn't speak Chinese."
A Chinese automaker, the Sichuan Automobile Industry Group, denied Wednesday it was planning to buy General Motors' Hummer-brand sports utility vehicle unit. Bloomberg News reported Monday that Sichuan Auto, a small car firm based in Chengdu in southwest China's Sichuan Province, was considering a five hundred million-dollar bid for GM's Hummer line. Or not.
In reality, it seems as though a good portion of the American automobile industry is circling the drain, with little hope of rising from the muck and mire. Even the door-busting deals from this past weekend's Presidents' Day Sale-A-Bration wasn't enough to put a dent in the red ink that continues to flood the ledgers at General Motors. If no one buys the trailing bits of the company, such as Saturn, Saab, and the misunderstood behemoth that is Hummer, these brands could go the way of the Porter, the Tucker, and the DeLorean. Where is Michael Moore on this one? "President-Elect Obama has to say to them, yes, we're going to use this money to save these jobs, but we're not going to build these gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles any longer. We're going to put the companies into some sort of receivership and we, the government, are going to hold the reigns on these companies. They're to build mass transit. They're to build hybrid cars. They're to build cars that use little or no gasoline."
Sounds like a pretty good idea, unless the R&D guys at Chrysler have completed their work on the flux capacitor.