Hummer-Hatin' story cleared up

This is part of the problem with newspapers on the Internet. As I wrote about a little while ago, the Ann Arbor News had a somewhat strange article on how people in town don't like the Hummer. Taken on its own, it just seemed like an unusual choice for an entire article. Now, poking around the site a bit more, it's clear that the article was more of a sidebar to a story, written by the same reporter, on summer Hummer sales (that's fun to say out loud). The gist of this main story is that even though gas prices are climbing, Hummer sales are up an incredible amount this year. The first six months of 2005 saw about 17,000 Hummers sold, compared to almost 33,000 between January and June of 2006. The smaller, cheaper H3 was the main reason, according to Ward's Automotive Group. Now it all makes sense. The earlier article does, anyway. I'm still unclear why people buy vehicles it costs $70 to fill up.
[Source: Ann Arbor News]