It’s hard to miss Hummer’s distinctive and recognizable design traits once you see one on the road. The boxy, anti-aerodynamic, beast of a vehicle is recognized worldwide. Jean Halliday stated in an AdAge article today, “As recently as 2006 the truck was still seen by many consumers as a fun — even cool — ride, making regular appearances in Hollywood (notably on HBO’s “Entourage”) and at big sporting and red-carpet events.” The Hummer was brought to life for the military and made publicly popular and sought-after by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although that was initially the most “rough around the edges” version of the Hummer, the H1, we quickly saw more civilian focused models arrive with the birth of the H2 and more recently the H3. The H2 was certainly a hit! Not only with high profile sports figures but also with the corporate world as well. CEO’s were now finding it cool own a vehicle that could scale mountains!

If you’ve ever driven one of these monsters they certainly do attract attention. With celebrities snatching these vehicles up, customizing them from top-to-bottom and many others following suit; demand for this brand was high. But, beginning in July of 2007 and most dramatically again in March of ’08, demand has fallen off like Big Brown’s Triple Crown hopes 1 minute into this weekend’s Belmont Stakes.

What is causing this dramatic loss in demand? For starters Hummer has always had its critics. Seen as a gas guzzling environmental killer the Hummer has been known to attract equally negative attention. In fact, a friend of mine recently traded in her H2 for a new ML 350 because of the guilt associated with all the negative attention. However, there is one quick conclusion on what has had the most impact – Yes, of course, the recent dramatic rise in gas prices!!!!

It’s no coincidence that as gas prices began to skyrocket this past March that we have seen the dramatic negative impact on demand of the Hummer. So much so that GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner recently announced the possibility of selling the Hummer brand and concentrating on the compact/fuel-efficient vehicle segment. The Hummer brand will be a hard sell to prospective buyers so long as gas prices remain high worldwide. So does this mean we will no longer see these vehicles on the road? Highly unlikely! There will always be people willing to pay a premium to seen in an attention grabbing hill climber, river fording vehicle like the Hummer, despite its perceived impact on the environment. Who knows though, perhaps we’ll see Arnold in a Prius!

On Monday, the Energy Information Association released its latest gas price data; the U.S. price at the pump (all grades) stood at $3.51 at the end of April, the highest price on record. The conversation surrounding oil prices and the economy has made the price of gas a hot topic across political debates and fuel economy a component of recent automotive campaigns.

Does the price of gas actually run the engine of automotive interest in the US? If you sell compact cars it sure does. Compete tracked monthly shopping, or demand, for the compact car segment and compared it to the monthly U.S. weighted average gasoline (all grades) prices over recent months. Compete measures in-market demand by looking across all popular 3rd-party sites and aggregates unique shopping behavior by observing how many people actually utilize shopping tools for every make and model.

Compete also compared demand and gas prices for the most popular hybrid and best-known fuel-efficient compact car, the only U.S. model to exclusively offer every trim as a hybrid: the Toyota Prius. It appears, and not surprisingly so, that shopping spikes and falls coincident with gas prices.

Since launching, the Prius has been synonymous with fuel efficiency and hybrid fervor. April marked the highest shopper count total for Prius on record. Prius was the 4th most shopped model in the U.S. in April, when it had over 124,000 shoppers in that month alone. To put that in perspective, 124,000 shoppers was more than the entire shopper total for more than 25 other makes. In other words, more people shopped for a Prius than for all BMW models combined. Prius had more shoppers than the Lexus brand had in total despite the recent Lexus “power of h“ hybrid featured ad campaign. More people shopped for Prius than for Chrysler, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Pontiac or GMC to drive the point a little further down the road.
Prius outperformed all models combined (from a unique count, a person could have shopped for more than one model within a make) for the above-mentioned makes and in doing so outperformed the entire make demand for more than 70% of all major makes selling cars or trucks in the U.S. today. Does Prius deserve to be its own make with a portfolio of models that sell off of the fuel-efficient brand promise?

Prius has demonstrated that the right message at the right time works. Better fuel economy messaging works when gas prices peak for compact cars, and Prius has the hook consumers are willing to fish for in a compact car segment that is growing. I haven’t met many people that expect a severe decline in gas prices in the future, which would lead me to conclude that Prius is destined for yet more attention and subsequent success. Could the Prius brand extend across a wider range of products? I think it could. It certainly has enough attention from consumers at the moment to share shoppers across more models.