The latest salvo in the United States SUV war is a Sierra Club website on which the California-based environmental group attacks the Hummer H2 – which it calls the “Hummerdinger” – as a backward-looking behemoth, the Detroit News reported.
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The motor city newspaper said the new website is the latest sign that the debate over large vehicles and their environmental impact is changing from a lobbying battle of facts, figures and arguments into a struggle to shape American attitudes.
The Detroit News said the Sierra Club compares the Hummer campaign to its 1999 effort to ridicule the launch of the Ford Excursion, when it dubbed that super-sized vehicle the “Ford Valdez” in a reference to the oil tanker that polluted the Alaska coast.
The paper said the club’s website treats visitors to fake news stories written in the satirical style of the Internet newspaper, The Onion. The “top story” is reportedly headlined, “GM celebrates Hummer’s state-of-the-art 1950s engine technology with some of today’s hottest stars,” such as Fabian and Pat Boone.
The Detroit News said the site also features a 30-second television ad – which will probably never actually air – that mocks GM’s ads for the H2 SUV. Instead of the GM tag line, “Like Nothing Else,” the Sierra Club version reportedly says the H2 “Pollutes Like Nothing Else.”
According to the Detroit News, GM officials called the Sierra Club campaign “misplaced,” since the company plans to sell the H2 in relatively small quantities of about 40,000 units per year.
“Any effect that Hummer could have is minuscule,” GM spokesman Pete Ternes told the paper. “It’s clear they are just using its popularity to promote their cause and not really to make a difference.”
