<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Joey Arbogast&amp;#039;s first reaction about Hummer&amp;#039;s sale to Tengzhong was relief. Arbogast is director of marketing for Superlift Suspension Systems in West Monroe, Louisiana. The company makes suspension system kits for Hummers (and other vehicles), and Arbogast says that he was concerned that Hummer would never find a buyer and end up in the scrap heap like Pontiac. &amp;quot;We thought Hummer was dead,&amp;quot; he tells PM. Manny MacMillan, who&amp;#039;s fixed Hummers for more than a decade and sits on the board of The Hummer Club, echoed that sentiment, saying he was glad to see that the brand has found a lifeline. But both men are taking a wait-and-see approach to the brand&amp;#039;s new ownership. MacMillan, who still drives the same H1 he fixed up in the mid-1990s, was already a Hummer enthusiast when GM began selling Hummers and people worried that the company would take away some of the vehicle&amp;#039;s toughness. Now, he says, he expects that Tengzhong will probably slim down the Hummer when it sets the course for the brand&amp;#039;s future with a new H4 design. But smaller isn&amp;#039;t necessarily a bad thing--he wouldn&amp;#039;t be heartbroken if Hummers shrank a little. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d be heartbroken if they get away from off-road capability,&amp;quot; he says.  Arbogast sees Hummer&amp;#039;s new owners moving toward lighter, highway-centered vehicles, trying to save money wherever they can. As a result, he says, a Hummer&amp;#039;s price tag will probably drop. That doesn&amp;#039;t mean Tengzhong won&amp;#039;t make a sturdy, tough Hummer, he says, but he isn&amp;#039;t sure what to expect in the short term. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a learning curve for them,&amp;quot; he tells PM. &amp;quot;Their market doesn&amp;#039;t put the wear and tear on them that our market does.&amp;quot; Arbogast thinks Tengzhong&amp;#039;s growing pains might mirror those of Honda and Hyundai--when those brands first came to America, people regarded their cars as clunkers, but the companies eventually grew to offer some of the highest-rated vehicles on the market.  One way that Hummer&amp;#039;s new owners might keep the vehicle&amp;#039;s off-road capabilities while addressing its bad environmental record would be to go electric, according to KC Jones of Raser Technologies, whose 100-mph plug-in hybrid Hummer we drove last week. Though Tengzhong wasn&amp;#039;t one of the Hummer suitors who came to see his system, Jones speculates that GM may have used the Hummer&amp;#039;s electrification potential to sell the brand. &amp;quot;The Hummer was a great platform to work with,&amp;quot; he says, and he could either continue working on a plug-in version if the new owners choose to go that way, or adapt the technology to another large vehicle like the Ford F-150.  Arbogast, however, expects that Hummer&amp;#039;s new ownership may present some logistical problems. Dealing with a foreign-owned car company can be difficult, he says, because any major decision has to go through the top brass back in the company&amp;#039;s home country. And the sale of Hummer also presents a problem for off-road warriors like MacMillan who still drive the original H1. Though GM dealerships sold H1 parts, they came from AM General, which supplies the Humvee for the military. Now, he says, the military will have to figure out how to deal with routing the H1&amp;#039;s military technology through Hummer&amp;#039;s new Chinese owners or go a different route. Michael McNamara, manager of Off Road Unlimited in Burbank, Calif., expects that the kits and parts for most Hummers won&amp;#039;t change much, at least not until the new owners unveil a different model. So the work that shops like his do on Hummers should stay about the same. However, he says, he&amp;#039;s worried about the brand going to a relatively unknown owner. Though McNamara (calling the H2 &amp;quot;a Hummer-style body on a Tahoe frame&amp;quot;) preferred the original Hummer, at least the H2 and H3 were made by a proven company, he says. &amp;quot;Everyone knows GM, and their quality of work.&amp;quot; Hummer fans won&amp;#039;t truly know the fate of their favorite brand for some time. Tengzhong has said it will keep the Hummer leadership team on board and the American manufacturing plants open for now, but what kind of Hummer the company builds in the future--and where it builds it--are still up in the air. MacMillan just hopes that the baddest off-road vehicle out there doesn&amp;#039;t lose its wandering soul: &amp;quot;The way to ruin the brand is to make it a luxury vehicle or a grocery-getter.&amp;quot;  RELATED STORIES * PLUS: Taking a Rebuilt Land Cruiser from Durango to Boulder  * TEST DRIVE: Taking the 100 MPG Hummer for a Ride  * EARLIER: First Look at the Hummer HX Concept  * OFF-ROAD: 7 New Clean Four-Stroke Off-Road Motorcycles  * FOLLOW US: Popular Mechanics is Now on Twitter!  * FRIEND US: Find PM on Facebook   (Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a12382/4320478/>