From the October 2011 issue.



C/D: You’re the son of a car salesman?

JB: For 34 years, my dad managed dealerships in Delaware. Mostly GM, but he did run a Chrysler operation and for a short time also sold Fords in Wilmington. He was bringing cars home all that time. I remember my senior prom, being able to take a 7000-mile Chrysler 300D off the lot.

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C/D: Which cars do you most recall?

JB: I bought a ’51 Studebaker. My dad thought it was nice and calm, but it had that overdrive, and it was fast. Then I bought a 1952 Plymouth convertible, candy-apple red with a split windshield. I think that was my favorite. I had a ’56 Chevy, then in college I bought a 100,000-mile Mercedes 190SL with those Solex carburetors that never functioned. And I still have my 1967 Goodwood-green Corvette, 327, 350-horse, with a rear-axle ratio that really gets up and goes. The Secret Service won’t let me drive it. I’m not allowed to drive anything. It’s the one thing I hate about this job. I’m serious.

C/D: It must be gratifying to see Chrysler pay off its government loans six years early. Where is GM in its payback schedule?

JB: GM is on schedule. They’ve paid back a significant portion. We still hold 33.3 percent of GM common equity, but the point is that 33.3 percent is worth something. So taxpayers have an asset. But the best news is GM is talking about hiring back essentially the last of the laid-off workers by year’s end. No one ever thought we’d get there.

C/D: You said the loss of GM and Chrysler would’ve killed a million jobs?

JB: One million, absolutely. The critics talk about, “Oh, the market would have balanced things out.” But that’s like saying, “In the long run, we’ll all be dead.” Had we not forced the car companies to reorganize, then given them help, well, the failure of the suppliers then could have caused Ford to fail as well. So this has exceeded everyone’s expectations.

C/D: Absent a simultaneous recession, would you still have bailed them out?

JB: I would have, just because I don’t accept this proposition that somehow the U.S. cannot handle a heavy-duty manufacturing capacity, that we should shift our focus to service industries. Look at Japan and Germany—their labor costs are as high as ours. Big countries have to be able to make big things. Have to.

C/D: In ’09, you pushed a $2 billion grant for battery research. How’s that going?

JB: One of the things I’m proudest of is what we’ve done in battery technology. In the next decade, we’ll have batteries that are one-third to one-tenth the weight of today’s. You’ll be able to go 1000 miles. They’re making breakthroughs in the lithium-ion batteries packing more power. It’s already being applied to industrial uses—in buildings, generators, tractors. They’re on the cusp of a follow-on to the lithium-ion battery. You’ll see this leapfrog present technology. It’s going to be destabilizing, in one sense, because you’ll find that some of the [hybrid] technology out there becomes obsolete. But with the average life span of an automobile being less than a decade, it’s not going to matter much economically.

C/D: A repeat of Cash for Clunkers?

JB: Probably not. But it makes sense. One role of government is to go where venture capital won’t. In the Civil War, you had a president pay the railroads $16,000 for every mile of track they laid. You had Eisenhower invest $25 million in a defense agency called ARPA that came up with a thing that became the internet. We not only won’t get another Cash for Clunkers, but we’re having trouble keeping our friends on the other side of the aisle from doing away with what’s left of the seed money for innovative technologies that bring billions off the sidelines.

View Photos 2011 Cadillac CTS-V GETTY IMAGES , THE MANUFACTURERS

C/D: Any cars recently zing you?

JB: My brother has one of those 556-hp [CTS-V] Cadillacs with a manual. He brought it down for me to eat my heart out. So I got in. I have a driveway that’s about 1700 feet long. I knew the Secret Service wouldn’t let me drive it outside. So I jumped on that sucker and laid rubber. A great feeling. That thing could probably beat my Corvette.

C/D: Sadly, we must ask about the Onion story. While shirtless, have you ever washed a 1981 Pontiac Trans Am in your driveway?

JB: [Laughing] You think I’d drive a Trans Am? I have been in my bathing suit in my driveway and not only washed my Goodwood-green 1967 Corvette but also simonized it. At least the Onion should have had me washing a Trans Am convertible. I love convertibles.

C/D: In a lifetime of legislating, anything you’d have done differently?

JB: Win the presidency the first time I tried [laughing]. See, if I’d won in ’88, the industry would have never been in trouble.

C/D: Tell the president to read C/D.

JB: I will. And I do.

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