【Native Speaker每日综合训练—31系列】【31-05】经管— Motors and Hero

AceJ

Official Weibo:  http://weibo.com/u/3476904471


我们始终坚信，每一次阅读，都应是一次美妙的旅程
而工作组的使命就是带领大家领略阅读中的极致美景
一起来领略这奇妙旅程的第六站—Motors and Hero 汽车和英雄
正在如火如荼进行中的北美国际车展NAIAS让我们看到了底特律乃至整个北美汽车工业的无限潜能（尽管底特律已经破产，但这只是代表政府，并不代表汽车工业）。汽车，这个作为人类现代化的重要标志，是我们生活中必不可少的工具。而汽车行业，不仅是现代工业中重要的组成，科技的闪光点，更是商业发展早期（特别是美国）众多巨头的诞生领域，包括福特，通用，克莱斯勒；也是一些伟大商业领袖的诞生领域，像亨利福特，阿尔弗雷德斯隆（MIT斯隆商学院就是以其命名）及沃尔特克莱斯勒。不过Ace今天在讲汽车故事的同时，并不像说太多这些名家的故事，但想讲一讲生活在父亲的阴影之下，最终郁郁而终的Edsel B. Ford

Part I: Speaker

Article 1

The Future of Cars

[Rephrase 1]
General Motors veep Larry Burns previews cool next-gen car design: sleek, customizable (and computer-enhanced) vehicles that run clean on hydrogen -- and pump energy back into the electrical grid when they're idle.

[Speech, 9:09]


Source: TED
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzQ4NTA2MTg0.html
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AceJ

Part II: Speed

Article 2

100 Years Ago, the Auto Industry was America’s Silicon Valley

By Kate Abbey-Lamberts

[Time 2]
Cars have come a long way in the last 100 years.

As car companies showed off their latest models at the Detroit auto show last week and engineers experiment with self-driving vehicles and solar panel roofs, the technology of 1914 seems pretty archaic.

But the early 1910s were actually some of the most exciting years for cars -- a period when bursts of new innovation kept the industry moving forward in leaps and bounds, according to Matt Anderson, curator of transportation at the Henry Ford, a history museum in Dearborn, Mich.

"This is the time, right about 1914, when the car shifts away from being a horse and a buggy to something in its own right," Anderson said. "They start to move away from just adapting buggy designs and putting a motor in there somewhere, to designing them from the ground up to be automobiles."

Anderson cites the assembly line as one ofthe biggest auto industry game-changers of the era. Introduced in 1913 by Henry Ford, by the following year it had reduced the time it took to make a single Model T to 90 minutes, down from over 10 hours.

The assembly line meant Ford could produce more cars for lower prices, and it was soon implemented by the rest of the industry. But it also increased worker dissatisfaction as speed and mundane tasks won out over individual craftsmanship. Work conditions that were less desirable led to a high turnover rate, which Anderson said was one of the reasons Ford introduced the "Five-Dollar Day" wage increase in 1914.
[260 words]

[Time 3]
But the biggest change for cars 100 years ago was the electric starter, Anderson said. Introduced in 1912, the push-button starters meant drivers no longer had to crank their engines, a difficult and dangerous process. It opened cars up to a larger market and allowed manufacturers to use bigger and more powerful engines.

Electric starters also helped axe the electric car, Anderson said.

At the time, electric cars weren't uncommon. They were less complex to drive, quieter and cleaner -- women were a target market. But they were also subject to being plugged in and not practical for long distances. After the electric starter was introduced, gasoline-powered cars soon became the industry standard.

There were scores of car companies that began in the early 1900s, and many were gone within a year or two. But the crowded market helped produce the car as we know it today.

"There were so many different small companies coming in with their own little innovations, a lot of things are appearing at one time," Anderson said, "and very quickly, as those companies come and go, the features that really do make a difference are established and adopted widely by the manufacturers."

The V8 engine caught on with Cadillac's 1914 model, Anderson said -- it was expensive but worked with the luxury brand. That year, the first Dodge had an all-steel body rather than including wood, which also, clearly, caught on.

There were also trends and technologies that didn't stick around, like the cyclecar.
[249 words]

[The Rest]
Introduced in 1912, the two-seaters were popular for a few years. They were cheap, but as cars became more affordable across the board, the poorer-quality cyclecars became obsolete before 1920.

Other experimentation lasted longer: The Willy's-Knight company used quieter but more expensive sleeve valve engines, and several luxury carmakers followed suit, but they fell out of use in the next few decades.

"But [the Willy's-Knight engine] is a good example of the 'anything goes' attitude at that time," Anderson said. "You could try something that radical and that different because some of the conventions weren't as firmly established as today.

"It very much was the Silicon Valley of the era, the nation's leading high-tech industry."


Source: THE HUFFINGTON POST
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/1914-cars_n_4611555.html

Article 3

Motor Industry: American Pie

[Time 4]
While the Great Gatsby believed he could lie his way from mid-western obscurity into Long Island society, Walter Chrysler, a railway mechanic from Ellis, Kansas, earned his 23-room house, complete with swimming pool and 450-foot (137m) waterfront on Long Island Sound, through single-minded application.

By 1923, when he was only 47, Chrysler was the first American manager with a $1m salary. Yet Chrysler's real life's work was only beginning: he was about to found his car company and finish the then biggest and most beautiful skyscraper in New York, the Chrysler Building. While Chrysler would never be the Ford Motor Company or General Motors, both man and company were to occupy a prime position in American motor history. Chrysler's original workman's tool-box, with the tools he crafted himself, is still stored in the company's Detroit offices, like some sacred ark of the covenant.

Two recent books—“Chrysler” by Vincent Curcio, the first lengthy biography of Walter Chrysler, and “Taken for a Ride”, Bill Vlasic and Bradley Stertz's inside account of the friendly takeover of Chrysler Corporation by Daimler-Benz—chart the rise and fall of America's third-largest car company. The Chryslers (originally Kreussler) were a hard-working family who immigrated to Kansas from Germany. Walter became an apprentice mechanic at the local railway company; by his mid-20s he was running the workshops. Eventually he reorganized the troubled factories of the American Locomotive Company (making steam engines), which is how he came to the attention of a new industry, automobiles. His success at Alco led to him running the factories of Buick, then the biggest part of the struggling young General Motors. He made a fortune out of stock options and saved other ailing car makers, such as Willys Overland and Maxwell-Chalmers. Eventually, of course, he went on to develop his own car.
[300 words]

[Time 5]
The Chrysler Six caused a sensation at the New York Auto Show in January 1924. Sleek, powerful and stylish, it was the product of technical research rather than just high-quality workmanship and as revolutionary in its way as Henry Ford's Model T had been 20 years before. Chrysler's greatest triumph was to price it at just over $1,000, about one-fifth of the cost of its rivals. By 1928 Chrysler had acquired Dodge Brothers and become one of the big three auto makers. Clever positioning of the Plymouth and the introduction of rubber suspension helped keep sales steady through the Depression. In 1934 Chrysler brought out the first streamlined modern car, the Airflow.

The good life got to Chrysler; “a functioning alcoholic” is how Mr Curcio describes him. He died in August 1940. Forty years later, Chrysler Corporation had its own brush with death and was saved only by Lee Iacocca who persuaded the federal government to guarantee the company's loans. By appealing to American patriotism and decrying Japanese imports, Mr Iacocca succeeded for a while. But by then, Chrysler's products were so dated that company executives used to call their predominantly middle-aged blue-collar customers Pods—poor old dumb sods.

Robert Eaton, who took over Mr Iacocca's job, knew that Chrysler could not survive on its own. It was only half the size of the other two American manufacturers, and scale was becoming all-important. An attempt by Mercedes-Benz (the car arm of Daimler-Benz) to forge a joint venture foundered in 1995, but the executives got to know each other. In 1998 the Germans returned with a deal pitched as a merger of equals, though it was not seen as such by most Americans. Senior Chrysler managers began leaving in droves. When the president of Chrysler was fired by a trembling Mr Eaton it was obvious that Daimler's boss, Jürgen Schrempp, was calling the shots. Mr Eaton soon retired. Today only 8% of DaimlerChrysler shares are held by Americans. Given their performance since the merger, this might be a blessing for American investors. But it would have broken Walter Chrysler's heart.
[349 words]

Source: Economist
http://www.economist.com/node/341508

Article 4

Edsel B. Ford

By Ron Osborn

[Time 6]
I have prepared a short story on the life of Edsel Ford. As most of us know, Edsel died in May, 1943, so it seemed fitting to honor the man on the 46th anniversary of his death, whose car and club are named after him.

The story deals with his youth, his fascination with car design and development, his Presidency of Ford Motor Company and his untimely death at age 49. Let me say that finding articles on Edsel Ford was no easy task. Edsel lived in the shadow of his father so much that very little is known about him even today. Even as President of Ford, he made very few major decisions.  It was usually Henry that made the final decisions for the Company. However, Edsel enjoyed cars; especially car design. It was his hobby as well as his specialty. Edsel had other hobbies, like photography, fast boats, painting and sports, but cars remained his lifelong favorite.

During his early childhood, Edsel and his father worked side by side on cars. Later on, Edsel became more fascinated by the shapes of automobiles than by their inner workings. As a teenager, he built several speedsters, mostly T-based. Edsel was indulging in a common pastime of the day, one shared by quite a few young men with money, the difference being that Edsel had an unlimited supply of parts. This love of styling and building cars would come in very handy as time went on.

I found a statement by Edsel which was dated in 1922 - "Father makes the most popular car in the world. I would like to make the best car in the world - Lincoln". In the late '20's, it was Edsel who guided the styling of the Model A, and gave it the mini-Lincoln look. At the time Henry was too busy straightening out the innards to worry about the A's outlines. He didn't care what the car looked like as long as it did what he wanted it to do, and it was painted black (REMEMBER?)
[342 words]

To be continued in Obstacle...

AceJ

Part III: Obstacle

[Paraphrase 7]
Edsel regularly had cars built for his personal use. Two of his personal favorites were his 1932 and 1934 speedsters. The 1932 was a V-8 Boat-tail speedster, and was built with the help of stylist-designer E.T. Gregorie.

The '32 was a beautiful car with quite a number of radical features for its time. All aluminum body, pantalooned fenders, bullet headlights, no running boards, split windshield and V'd grille shell.

Two years later in 1934, Edsel again called on Gregorie to build him another speedster. It again had an aluminum body, but this model was lower than the '32, and the headlights were mounted at the axle height. There were twin-windscreens, no doors, and the overall effect was that of a pure racing car. Edsel has no intention of producing any of these cars in quantity, and for the most part he kept them out of his father's sight. Seems Edsel kept his speedsters inside a gardener's shed at his home.

Edsel became the guiding light behind Ford's styling section, and as mentioned before, the Lincoln became Edsel's crowning achievement. But he also saw the Zephyr and most other pre-war Fords through their various stages of body design. As one can see, these were very happy times for Edsel. Unfortunately, there would be fewer of these happier times as the pressures of running the Ford Motor Company, an over-demanding father, and America's entry into the Second World War would begin to take its toll on Edsel. After Edsel's death, both speedsters were sold.

Edsel was twenty-five years of age when he became President of Ford, but the appointment was no more than a cruel hoax. Foxy old Henry had redesigned the Presidency and was making noises about organizing a rival firm to build a better and cheaper car than the Model "T".  Henry had no intention of relinquishing control of the Ford Motor Company, nor did he plan to organize another company. He was simply diluting and very effectively the value of Ford's stock, preparing to buy out the small minority stockholders and assume total control. Edsel was being manipulated, and he would be manipulated, harassed, tormented and humiliated all the remaining days of his life.

Once, when all the Ford brass, including Henry, were attending a luncheon, Henry rose from the table and yelled at Edsel to "shut up", and stormed out of the room. Apparently Henry had overheard Edsel remarking that there was some merit in placing hydraulic braking systems on all Ford products, which were being done on virtually all of Ford's competitors. It didn't pay to criticize Ford cars - not in Henry's presence at least - and this included Edsel. One side note on the subject; Edsel's brother-in-law and closest confidant, Ernest Kanzler, had learned that in 1926. Kanzler, a second Vice President at Ford, composed a six-page letter in January of that year, pointing out that Chevrolet sales were rapidly gaining, while Ford's were in sharp decline.  Kanzler, while delicately refraining from direct criticism of Henry's beloved Model "T", called for a more competitive six cylinder car. "With every additional car our competitors sell, they get stronger and we get weaker."

It backfired, and Henry was furious. Thereafter, Ernest Kanzler found himself ignored, ridiculed, and victimized in every conceivable way. Ultimately, while Edsel was out of the country, Henry had Kanzler fired.

On one occasion, Edsel had contracted for the construction of a new office building. It seems both Accounting and especially the Sales department had long since outgrown their quarters.  Henry was out of town at the time that the plans were made and the contracts let. (One suspects that this may not have been coincidental!) Upon his return, the elder Ford took note of the excavation that was underway and demanded to know what was going on. Edsel, doubtless with a mixture of pride and dread, described the new building which would supply Company with badly needed office space. Henry wanted to know for whom? This should have been Edsel's cue to pitch for the needs of the Sales department - something Henry could understand.  Instead, however, the younger Ford mentioned first the accountants. Without waiting to hear another word, Henry turned and marched out of Edsel's office.

The next morning, when the accountants reported for work, they found their offices stripped.  No desks, chairs, files or telephones. Even the carpeting was gone, and they were out of a job.  Henry had abolished the Accounting department with which he had never had any patience with anyway, and overnight had seen to the removal of its furniture and equipment. He then informed Edsel that there was now plenty of room for the Sales staff.

People wondered then, and still wonder, why Edsel put up with such treatment. A few reasons I found were:
•Some said it was out of love for his father.
•Edsel had three sons.  Perhaps he was simply hanging on until the day that they could take over.
•Doubtless there was the factor of family loyalty.  For Edsel to have left the Company would almost certainly have depressed the value of Ford stock, all of which was held by family members.
•Others, more cynical, pointed out that Edsel derived a very handsome income from the Ford Motor Company.
•Most importantly, from all the evidence, Edsel Ford was simply not a combative individual.  Confrontation and conflict were totally foreign to his nature.

In any event, Edsel mostly kept his torment to himself. Only rarely did he reveal his inner emotions to anyone - some perhaps to his wife Eleanor, and to Ernest Kanzler before he was fired by Henry.
Frustration and suppressed rage make a poor recipe for good health and long life. Not surprisingly, Edsel fell victim to ulcers. In time, the ulcers led to something far worse. Early in 1942, he underwent abdominal surgery. Ten months later, he was hospitalized again, this time for something called Undulant Fever. (My medical book describes this as a persistent form of Brucellosis transmitted to humans from lower domestic animals, or by their by-products, and characterized by a recurrent fever, sweating and pain in the joints). As part of a bland diet, Edsel had been drinking milk from his father's dairy, and of course old Henry would not permit the testing of his herd, much less the pasteurization of the milk. But the doctors found something far worse than undulant fever, as bad as that was. Edsel's ulcers had become cancerous, and his condition was deemed inoperable. He was sent home to die.

Henry Ford refused to admit the truth about his son's condition. "It was all due to Edsel's high flying lifestyle", he said. "If Edsel would stop smoking or eat a proper diet, or go see other doctors, his health would improve". But early in the morning of May 26th, 1943, death came for Edsel Ford. As I mentioned earlier, he was only 49. This story might have had a different ending if Edsel had been able to stand up to his stubborn father, demanding that he be allowed to run the Company without interference. But Edsel was Edsel, putting the feelings of others before his own.

Edsel did make an impact during his short life, though:
•On his community. For years Edsel Ford was one of the largest donors to the Detroit Community Fund.
•On the Arts. A talented landscape artist in his own right, Edsel served for many years as President of the Detroit Arts Commission.
•On the product line. It was Edsel who influenced his father to take over the bankrupt Lincoln Motor Company, saving one great car from the fate of so many others during the '30's.
•On his family. Edsel was the kind of parent who always was there, sharing the joys and problems of his children. Edsel's final irony was the fact that the car that was intended by his family to do him honor turned out to be a dismal flop. And, yes, on his father. In the end, it was Edsel who persuaded the old man to replace the Model "T", to mechanize his windshield wipers, to adopt - finally - hydraulic brakes, to engage in some semblance of long range planning and to make peace with organized labor.

One has to wonder whether Henry Ford ever comprehended what he had done to his only son.  It seems unlikely. Certainly he never even began to understand this complex gifted man, nor did he ever really try. Nevertheless, he was grief stricken at Edsel's death. Less than four years after Edsel's death, the old man himself was gone.

In conclusion, I think a statement made in 1970 by Mr. Henry Edmunds, Director of the Ford Archives, pretty well sums things up when he said:

"Edsel was responsible for many good things in the Company's history - insistence on verve and dash in product styling, on a reliable and safer product, on fair and courteous relationships with dealers and the public. He possessed an unquenchable sense of fitness, an insistence on doing the right thing. A single instance among many would be his little-known achievement in making Ford Overseas a strong segment in the Ford marketing empire. He did all the essential things that Henry refused to do, and consequently held the Company together during several crisis periods in the 1930's. In true retrospect, he seems less a tragic figure than popularly supposed.  Without him, the Company might never have attained the solid image it was today."

HAPPY EDSELLING!!!
[1583 words]

Source: Edsel.com
http://www.edsel.com/pages/edslford.html

AceJ

椰蓉面包 发表于 2014-1-24 07:20
会不会是2排呢？！！！

掌握工作组成员的发帖节奏乃是抢沙发的不二法门

AceJ

iamyingjie 发表于 2014-1-24 00:16
最近挖坑太多，不过还是忍不住跳了。谢谢Ace~

我都已经不是挖坑了，已经是地震了

AceJ

leeloo_song 发表于 2014-1-24 10:50
Time 2 2’04’’ automobile manufacturing was a high-tech industry in 1910s and flourished during  ...

leeloo同学看来是汽车行业的啊

AceJ

leeloo_song 发表于 2014-1-24 18:30
恩, 曾经Daimler的, 那公司正急速奔驰在下坡路上

老牌公司都会遇到大公司病，微软也在丧失优势，但还未极速下滑

AceJ

pennyz 发表于 2014-1-24 21:09
ACJ好棒，专题节目是一周最期待的阅读了！

谢谢Penny，大家喜欢就好

AceJ

unoit 发表于 2014-1-28 17:43
speaking

didn't follow at all, it seems talk about a new technology that GM is working on. Maybe ab ...

Hi, Unoit，Speaker部分有字幕的，如果没有跟上，可以试着看看字幕