They are a lane and a half wide, can wade through 24 inches of rainfall, weigh more than eight tonnes and get about 13 miles to the gallon. They were, for a while, a hulking, smoking embodiment of the American Dream. They may also about to become obsolete.

Yesterday, Rick Wagoner, the chief executive of General Motors, said that the car manufacturer was considering whether to sell the Hummer brand, the giant four-wheel drives that typically fill the car parks at American gun conventions.

While it is the surging gas price that finally is threatening the future of the Hummer, the sports utility vehicle has long been an object of contempt among many Americans. Hummer-haters detest it for the pollution it belches into the atmosphere, for the fact that it does not need to meet US fuel efficiency standards, for its bullying size and also for the kind of owners — typically men — who choose to drive them.

Within hours of Mr Wagoner’s statement to shareholders indicating that the GM board had launched a strategic review about the future of the Hummer business, a website dedicated to deriding the vehicle declared victory. “The Hummer-haters . . . will get their wish faster than they’d ever hoped,” it said. “It seems the death knell of the Hummer H2 has been sounded.”

The move to reconsider the future of the Hummer comes as the price of petrol reached a record $3.98 a gallon in the United States this week. Yesterday both Ford and General Motors (GM) admitted that car sales had slumped in May across the United States. Ford sales fell by 16 per cent and GM dropped 28 per cent.

Mr Wagoner said he believed that higher fuel prices were likely to be “permanent” and outlined plans to cut car production overall by 500,000 to 3.7 million vehicles a year, arguing that rising oil prices had triggered a “structural shift” in the market and had drawn Americans away from buying large vehicles.

Mr Wagoner said: “These \ prices are changing consumer behaviour and changing it rapidly. We don’t believe it’s a spike or a temporary shift. We believe it is, by and large, permanent.” He also said that he was closing four factories in Wisconsin, Ohio, Ontario and Mexico in the next two years as the Michigan-based company concentrates on making smaller, fuel-efficient cars. The production cuts are expected to reduce costs by around $1 billion. The company is trying to strip out $5 billion worth of costs in the next three years.

The American car industry has been forced to cope with sliding demand and surging costs. Manufacturers have been trying to reduce their operating costs so that they can compete with their more successful East Asian rivals such as Toyota, of Japan.

Mr Wagoner said: “We really would not foresee the likely prospect of new products in the plants that we’re announcing today that we’ll cease production in.”

GM shares closed up 14 cents at $17.58 in New York.

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