DETROIT (AP) -- U.S. Sen. Bob Corker said Tuesday he doesn't regret voting against a bailout for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC last month because he and other Republicans had a plan to help the carmakers succeed.
The lawmaker from Tennessee met with GM Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson behind closed doors at the North American International Auto Show. Corker also looked at the models the automaker says are key to its future health now that the Treasury Department has allocated $13.4 billion in loans to keep the company alive.
GM has a 3,500-worker plant in Spring Hill, Tenn.
Members of GM's design team gave Corker a tour of new vehicles on display, with Corker stepping into the Cadillic Converj concept car, which is designed to go 40 miles on electric power alone after being recharged from a standard wall outlet. A small gasoline engine would extend the range to hundreds of miles.
Corker said he was "impressed" with the Chevrolet Volt electric car, which is due in showrooms next year.
"Being here makes me even more committed to working to make sure these companies change their capital structure to get these products to market," he said.
Corker said it's too early to tell whether the aid granted to GM, along with $4 billion to Chrysler, is enough to keep the companies from failing later.
GM's Henderson said Monday that GM's worst-case scenario would require more cash than what Treasury has already allocated, and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said the Detroit automaker's long-term viability is "not 100 percent" certain.
Corker reiterated his previous comments that Chrysler may be too weak to survive long-term.
"It appears to me based on what I've looked at is that they have not invested in the technologies and those kinds of things necessary to be a standalone," he said. "My hope is they will in fact merge and be again a viable part of Michigan and our country."
Corker later visited Chrysler's exhibit of new cars as well as those of Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Co. Volkswagen is set to break ground on a Chattanooga, Tenn. assembly plant that will provide about 2,000 jobs.
Ford's president of the Americas Mark Fields showed Corker the company's Ford Flex, Taurus and Fusion hybrid, and explained the company's direct fuel-injection technology.
Corker was instrumental in leading the charge against GM and Chrysler's request for billions in aid last month.
A bill to provide aid stalled in the Senate when concession talks with the United Auto Workers faltered, but the Bush administration stepped in and granted GM and Chrysler $17.4 billion in loans to keep them operating at least through March.
Corker had pushed the UAW toward a firm date in 2009 by which wages and benefits would be reduced to match those at foreign manufacturers' U.S. plants -- a demand that by all accounts was the deal-killer. But some of the provisions that Corker had pushed for ended up in the loan terms set by the White House.
Corker said that many in Detroit did not understand that despite his vote against the bill, he was committed to helping the auto companies with the plan he proposed.
GM and Chrysler have to hammer out amendments to their current labor contracts, get bondholders to swap much of their debt for shares of the companies, and make other cost cuts, or else the government can call in the loans at the end of March.
Corker said U.S. automakers' labor costs must be comparable to those at foreign transplant automakers like Nissan Motor Co., which has more than 6,500 employees in his home state of Tennessee. But speaking at the auto show Tuesday, he said he couldn't offer specifics on what "competitive" would mean for UAW workers.
"It's subjective," he said. "In many ways I think they already were competitive."
Hourly wages for UAW workers at GM factories already are about equal to the average of $30 per hour Toyota Motor Corp. pays at its older U.S. factories, according to the companies. But including benefits and the cost of providing health care to retirees, the Detroit automaker says its total labor cost is around $69 per hour, compared with an all-inclusive cost of $53 per hour at Toyota, for example.
GM's total cost will drop to $62 per hour in 2010 when a UAW administered trust fund starts paying retiree health care costs, with the remaining difference due to the "legacy" costs of century-old GM paying its retiree pensions.