Hummer already has expertise and experience - all it needs is cash.

That was the message from CEO Jim Taylor this week as he mapped out a bright, green future under Chinese ownership.

Negotiations are under way between General Motors (GM) and Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery over the proposed purchase of the luxury car brand.

Taylor expects the deal to be done by the end of the third quarter and, although he refused to discuss the amount of money involved, he told China Daily that cash-strapped GM Corp had set financial clout as the main criteria for bidders.

"All I need is cash," he said. "We were looking for companies with the resources to fund our future development and keep the brand and dealers alive. I'll bring all (the experience and expertise) to the table."

If sold to Tengzhong, the brand will belong to a foreign company with no background in car manufacturing. But Taylor said the Chinese firm was happy to simply pay the bills and leave the vehicle-end of operations to Hummer's existing management, engineering, marketing and advertising teams.

On June 2, 2009, a day after filing for bankruptcy, General Motors General struck a tentative deal to sell its Hummer brand for an undisclosed amount to a Chinese manufacturer, Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. [Misha Erwitt/CFP]

The deal is a perfect fit, he said: Tengzhong will get an auto business and GM will get the brand off its books.

Whether the product is what China needs is subject to heated debate, with many analysts predicting Hummer will never return to the glory days of the early 2000s.

Hummers are high-end, rugged sport utility vehicles that have become symbols of opulence among the rich and famous. GM's decision to sell the brand came after a sharp fall in car sales during the recession. During the first quarter of this year, worldwide sales of GM vehicles dropped 28 percent to 1.6 million, the firm said, with Hummer sales plunging 62 percent to just 5,013.

The auto giant bought the Hummer brand in 1999, when the dot-com economy was still booming and gas prices were under US$2 a gallon. Fans at the time included movie star-turned-Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was reported to have once owned as many as seven.

Soon after, GM began offering scaled-down models to boost its customer base, with these snapped up by celebrities such as socialite Paris Hilton, basketball star Shaquille O'Neal, Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, England soccer star David Beckham and former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.

A spike in fuel prices and increasing fears over the environmental impact of GM's other SUV models have since dented the brand, while the stringent new fuel economy standards US carmakers will have to meet in the coming years is also expected to pose a challenge.

Meanwhile, many countries have mandated their own fuel economy standards. But Taylor said more environmental awareness in the automotive industry was a positive thing and vowed Hummer would be reborn with new eco-friendly, smaller and fuel-efficient models rolling off the production line.