For want of a hummer of green tunes

When a Chinese company acquires a Western counterpart, there is a shared sense of pride here. Our hearts swelled when Lenovo took over IBM's PC division four years ago. But we felt slighted when CNOOC's bid to take over California-based Unocal fell through because of political resistance. More recently, we felt cheated when Rio Tinto scrapped a deal with Chinalco.

Now, what many consider heartening news has been doing the rounds in the country. Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co is likely to acquire GM's Hummer. It's indeed a matter of pride for a Chinese company to take over a GM wing. But is that necessarily good news?

A Hummer is significantly bigger than other SUVs and hence consumes more fuel. In fact, it can be called fuel-guzzler. Experts say that since Hummer's models H2 and H3 are built over the 8500-lb GVW class, the US Environmental Protection Agency hasn't published its fuel economy data. That means we don't know exactly how fuel-inefficient it is. No wonder, environmentalists see it as a symbol of ecological irresponsibility.