Banks and Money, Automobiles and Roads, Industry in Africa, Two Courses of Action. Агафонова И.Г. - 7 стр.

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cars. No wonder five Japanese firms are on the list of the world’s top car producers.
Toyota ranks second, just behind General Motors, Nissan is third, Matsuda ninth,
Honda tenth, Mitsubishi eleventh, and Suzuki fifteenth.
       In looking for explanations to Japan’s “motor miracle” one must say that the
situation which took shape in the early 1970s favoured the car companies. Cuts in oil
supplies in 1973 and growing fuel prices forced the manufacturers of uneconomical
cars to adjust to the changed conditions and start developing new models. Meanwhile
consumers did not want to and could not wait. And then the Japanese came along and
offered a whole range of cheap and economical cars. Now Japan accounts for almost
one third of world automobile output. Since 1980, the car industry has been affected
by the general economic stagnation in Japan and other capitalist countries. In 1981
car firms had to introduce “voluntary” quotas on their exports to the US, Canada,
Western Europe, South Korea and Taiwan. As for the domestic market, it is not just
saturated but oversaturated. The automobilization that got under way in Japan in the
mid-1950s became something of an epidemic in the next decade. It is not by chance
that the Japanese equivalent of the English “my home is my castle” is “my car is my
castle”.
III.   Answer the following questions.
1. What was it necessary to produce in the mid-1930s in Japan?
2. Why did the automobile age begin in 1955?
IV.    Check up the pronunciation of the unfamiliar words in a dictionary and read
       Text 2 aloud.
                             Automobiles and Roads (Text 2)
1.     Japan entered the automobile age only some 40 years ago. 2. The first car was
brought from abroad as a present to the Emperor. 3. In 1902 a Japanese firm assem-
bled a 12 h.p. car from imported components. 4. It took another five years for the first
all-Japanese car to be produced. 5. In 1923 an earthquake hit Tokyo and dozens of
other big cities. 6. It destroyed almost all houses and roads. 7. There was an acute
need for buses and lorries. 8. The government took over the motor industry. 9. The
government oriented it towards the manufacture of lorries. 10. By the end of World