Jim Lynch owns $7.5 million worth of car dealership devoted to a brand that's no longer in production and might or might not continue to exist, depending on the whim of the Chinese government.

This is not a good business model.

For seven years, back when the Hummer H1 roamed the Earth, Lynch Hummer of Chesterfield, Mo., was the leading Hummer dealer in America. It could barely see the second-place dealer in its enormous side-view mirrors.

That ended in 2003, when the pencil-necked sissies at GM introduced the meek, sniveling, 6,614-pound H2. "That was more of a local product," Lynch says, as opposed to a massively expensive phenomenon like the four-ton H1 that brought buyers to his door from every manly corner of the nation.

Lynch Hummer was the expert, and when a fella was committing $100,000 to a gas-guzzling military-style SUV with the driveshaft in the middle of the cabin and all the front passenger space of a '73 Ford Maverick, he wanted a seller with authority.

It didn't hurt that the dealership has a 60-acre off-road course out back. You wanted to test-drive a Hummer in real-world conditions -- or anyway, real world if you live in the Himalayas -- you came to Lynch.

But then the H1 was discontinued, and sales fell off a cliff. Even before gas hit $4 a gallon last year, Lynch says, receipts were down 45 percent.

He went from 70 H2s and H3s a month to 35 to single digits: In August, only five new cars rolled off his lot in a nice western St. Louis suburb. With the factory on hiatus and Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery awaiting the approval of its repressive and capricious government to buy the brand, it did not seem like good fiscal strategy to sit tight.

"I need to move about 40 a month to break even," he says. "It's been a long time since I did that."

So a few weeks ago, he added a fresh product line:

Guns.

Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Colt. Benelli, Bushmaster, Browning. FNH, H&K, CMMG, DPMS.

Long guns, handguns, whatever kind of guns strike your fancy, chances are you can find it in the bright, spacious showroom where HUMMER signs hang on the walls and a pistol might hang on the belt of your salesman.

GM is not happy with Lynch's innovation. A Hummer spokesman told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that by contract, dealerships need to get company approval to open new businesses on their lots.

Lynch doesn't seem concerned, however, about GM's unhappiness.

He felt like GM cut him off at the axles when it dumped the H1, "the aspiration vehicle for tons of teenaged boys." Furthermore, most of what he knows about the potential sale comes from the newspapers; the only thing he's heard from the mother ship is that it expects the purchase to go through in September. Given the natural connection between Hummers and the outdoors, it seemed wise to act first and worry about corporate feelings later.

Lynch's mortgage holder doesn't want to hear about GM's prissy little regulations. But it likes knowing that he's moved enough firearms -- handguns and tactical rifles, mostly, with a surge in hunting rifles and shotguns expected for hunting season -- to equal the profit from 15 SUVs.

Lynch, 47, was the general manager of a Missouri Toyota dealership when he bought his first Hummer 15 years ago. He picked it up in Florida, and when he reached Atlanta on his trip home, he stopped and applied for a franchise.

"At first, I thought I was the only one goofy enough to want one of those big, ugly trucks," he says. "Then I found out it really was pretty good on the road, and I thought, 'Maybe I'm not the only one.'"

His daily driver is a black 1997 H1 hardtop with 100,000 miles on it. "It's been off-road most of its life and it's still rolling along," he says. "You'd turn anything else to junk treating it like that."

He still loves the truck, and he still loves selling them. He has to admit, though, that with the current state of the brand, he's better off pondering the addition of a shooting range than fretting over the sale of the company and possible changes to the products.

The excitement is in the firearms, and the priorities are reflected in his Web address, www.gunsandhummers.com. But he's still committed to the car dealership, even if he has only 14 new vehicles on the lot.

As the saying goes, sort of, man does not live by Beretta alone.