Time to scrap the Hummer?

Having abandoned my love affair with cars several years ago in favor of a rekindled flame with bicycles, I often find the public support of cars painful. My personal "sacrifice" (I think of it more as a liberation) seems meaningless while my tax dollars are going to support the continued manufacture of enough cars for two or three per family, roads that give plenty of room for wasteful travel, and other environmentally ruinous stuff. I don't find a lot of support for this line of reasoning, until this weekend.

In his Moral of the Story column in The New York Times, Randy Cohen argues we should stop the sale of the Hummer to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company. Why? Producing the cars anywhere is unethical (and while we're at it, Ford F-650, Mercedes S-Class, and Ferrari V12: you're on notice). Peter Cohan has another reason why the sale shouldn't go through; he argues that cultural and management problems will make it near-impossible for the Hummer to make money when it goes to China.