The good and bad of buying a new used car - the demise of Hummer?

As noted before, we have been looking for a replacement for our late BMW, which perished roadside in a fire. It’s been interesting, and while we do try to speak of marketing more than anything here, buying a car is such a bad time, our search is worth mentioning.
We started by going to the third party sites, including autotrader.com and cars.com. The quarry was a 2007 Mercedes C230. Found a place about 45 miles down the highway that had bought a few of these cars, but the place dealt mostly with used Fords and Mercs. You get the idea. Sent our contact to them via email, and someone called back. We said we’d be down later that evening. Showed up. Used car salesman comes out, we tell him our name and that we want to drive one of the C230s. He goes in to get the keys and lets us know that no one there has heard of us. We drive the car, which it is apparent that this dyed-in-the-wool sleazebag has no interest in selling, and knows nothing about. The car checks out, though. I go inside with him to get the Carfax report, which tells you who has owned the car, if it has been in may major wrecks, etc.. I look around at the poor, huddled masses who are about to get taken for a ride. They are defenseless in the fluorescent-lit, linoleum-floored shack that is a used car office. Soon, they will be upside down on that used Taurus that will have only 50,000 miles on it.
We leave and two days later, I email the sales guy an offer for the C230, about $800 below asking price. I expect a counter offer. I never hear from him again.
A couple days later, we head to our local import auto place. A kid of about 25 comes out, all boyish enthusiasm and surfer-style chatter. We drive a BMW X3, just to check it out. Caleb, the salesman, is terrifically funny, witty and curious about everything. And mostly, it’s not about the deal. We tell him the X3 is nice, but really want a good used C230. Give him our contacts and leave. Three days later, I get personal letter from Caleb, thanking us for coming in. Guess where we’re buying our car?
Not with the non-responsive American car guy, who thinks he’s doing us a favor.
It’s just another way that that the American auto industry has killed itself. And we're glad to see it go.

We see that Hummer is on the block. 
Great timing, eh? At the North American International Auto Show, General Motors made plenty of noise about the H3T and the possibility of a hydrogen-powered Hummer. GM last year spent $56 million on ads for the H3, the smaller of the two Hummer vehicles available. Now, as it begins a new campaign for the brand, the whole thing has been realized as a mistake, or so it seems.
“They are in a world of hurt,” auto consultant Gordon Wangers told us as we began gathering notes for that story a couple of weeks ago. He was amazed that GM didn’t see gas price hikes and managed its marketing for the brand in a better fashion.
“I think GM should have known what was coming and planned accordingly. They commitment they made to Hummer, and forcing the dealers to build palaces exclusively for Hummer in recent years, I’m not sure I would have done that.”
He ended our chat with: “I think if I had a Hummer now, I’d let it sit in my garage.”
And when asked if there was any possibility that Hummer might lay low while these gas prices sort out, a Hummer spokesman maintained that it is a “niche brand.” Oh. It looks as if Hummer may be headed for the boneyard if GM can't unload it.