Roger Penske

It's an old idea. Roger Penske bought Detroit Diesel from GM in 1988 and increased its share of the big-rig engine market from three percent to 30 percent, at the expense of giants Caterpillar and Cummins. "Detroit Diesel was struggling under General Motors," Penske says. "In fact, they lost $6 million between 1983 and 1988, and to be able to go in there and turn it around, that turns me on." Penske likes to pick up underdogs and revitalize them. Mark Donohue was winning Trans-Am championships in Camaros for him when Penske switched to Javelins from perennially struggling AMC. He bought Hertz's moribund truck unit and repainted the rigs with Penske Truck Leasing livery, his first big business venture beyond car dealerships. When he bought Detroit Diesel, Wall Street and car guys hoped he would purchase a large chunk of GM or become its CEO. Or both.

"There was a lot of speculation," Penske confirms with no elaboration from inside his Detroit Diesel-powered Newell luxury bus. The bus helps anchor a tent that forms the garage for the IRL cars of Helio Castroneves and Sam Hornish Jr. It's St. Petersburg Grand Prix weekend, nearly two months before Penske will try to chalk up his 14th Indianapolis 500 win. Wearing a black Hugo Boss team jacket over an open-neck white shirt, he watches the Nextel Cup race at Bristol on two overhead TV screens and munches a chopped salad for lunch. At 68, Penske's face has softened from the days when CART, which he cofounded, ruled open-wheel racing. His gray-blue eyes are deep set. He's a straightforward, plain-talker, quiet and calm, with a Cleveland-born Midwestern accent. He measures his words and often steers, mid-sentence, clear of controversy, but he speaks with conviction.

"Wagoner, Lutz, and Cowger are doing a great job," he says. "I can attest the quality of not only GM, but the Big Three is many, many times better. I can see it in the shops, which used to be filled up with warranty. These days they're not filled up with warranty, so we're looking for business." Detroit needs to cut production to cut incentives and raise the value of its cars, he says. It needs to cut dealer numbers to foreign-make levels.

Rear drive isn't crucial to GM's future fleet, Penske says. "I think what you really need is to be looking at all-wheel drive. But the distribution part of this thing is the most important part. You don't need four-wheel-drives in the South, and you don't need two-wheel-drives in the Northeast, where there's snow." He sees automotive trends as split between soccer moms migrating from minivans to SUVs to Chrysler Pacifica-style crossovers--a new generation of hybrid customers, first-time buyers driving Scions and well-heeled enthusiasts paying $125,000 and more for sports cars. He's one of the latter, naturally, with a scuderia that includes a Ferrari Enzo, F50, Lamborghini Murcielago, Ford GT, and Porsche Carrera GT. He drives them when time permits.

"I've been on the Porsche test track," he says, "and it's probably the most exciting drive I've ever had." How fast did he go in his Carrera GT? "Probably...I think we were doing 300." That's kph, or nearly 190 mph. Penske is the same enthusiast he was in his first SCCA National at Maryland's Marlboro Motor Raceway in 1958. And he owes much of his ability to buy 190-mph Porsche Carrera GTs to GM. "You know, GM really helped me--Frank Winchell and Bunkie Knudson," he says, adding the names Jim Hall and Jim Musser. Winchell, the 1960s Chevy R&D engineering chief, and Musser, assistant chief, lent surreptitious factory aid to Hall's Chaparral team, for which Penske drove. "I was on the distribution side as a dealer, and there were a lot of people at GM who helped me early on. There was always some connection that I was a GM guy, and really not any other makes. And that wasn't the case."