Современное автомобилестроение. Сахарова Н.С. - 93 стр.

    In 1959 the Triumph Herald appeared, the car with the ‘Italian look’, but the year
is best remembered for the Mini. This revolutionary car with its space saving features
influenced design in every major car producing country. Sports cars had emerged
from the doldrums of the 40s with some exciting new models.
    From Britain came the Jaguar XK series, Austin-Healey Sprite and 3000, Triumph
TR2 and MG, of course. The Italian masters Ferrari and Maserati were stylish and
expensive. Lancia and Alfa Romeo were also trend setters. From Germany came the
stunning Mercedes 300 SL. The trend in sports car design towards closed cars
offering weather protection and greater comfort began on the Continent. Vintage
sports car drivers scorned the trend as ‘going soft’. Two other new areas of design
were reinforced glass fibre bodies from Lotus, and rear engines from Porsche.
    The boom in car sales meant that by 1959 one in three families in Britain owned
car. With 5.5 million cars about, a road building programme got underway. In 1959
the M1 from London to Birmingham was opened. The 1957 motorist would pay 5/-
(25p) for petrol, £12.10/-(£12.50p) car tax and about £800 for a medium sized family
car. So motoring was still expensive on the average annual wage of £506.

   Exercise 1. Read the text and think of a title for it.

   17.9 Text 9
                                       The Sixties

    On the eve of the 1960s Prime Minister Macmillan made the famous statement
‘you’ve never had it so good’. It was a time of increasing affluence and a boom in
consumer goods. Car ownership became possible for most people and between 1957
and 1962 new car sales in Britain nearly doubled. The car became an indispensable
part of domestic life like the fridge or washing machine. It also became a measure of
personal success – a status symbol. The car could cut across class barriers. The
humble Mini for example was cherished by film stars, improverished students, city
stock brokers, as a second family car, or granny’s runabout. The family car of the
Sixties was comfortable, with many extras now standard to make motoring easier and
pleasant, like heaters and demisters. Two-tone colours were fashionable and so was
the term ‘De Lux’ for that certain car with a little more.
    For the ‘getaway people’, as a petrol company slogan ran, there was a new car
named after an Italian ski resort. In 1962 Ford introduced the Cortina at £639 and this
was justly described to have a ‘small car price and economy with big car speed and
space’. It gave people more for their money than they had ever dreamed possible.
Stylish body work, a spacious interior and from the 1198 cc engine, a top speed of 78
m.p.h. was possible. The Cortina was thoroughly conventional but the opposite was
true of a Jaguar E-Type – a classic and, like the Mini, a true symbol of the Sixties.
With its stunning looks and 150 m.p.h. maximum speed it obviously had, as another
petrol slogan put it, ‘a tiger in its tank’. Yet the E-Type, for all its looks, was
inexpensive at £2,200 when a comparable Ferrari cost over £6,000. Porsche produced
a fine sports car in 1963, the 911. It had tremendous performance and established the
company’s reputation for engineering quality. From Italy came a startling new name
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