第二篇：
For a moment, Toyota Motor CEO Akio Toyoda sounded a lot like an executive from Detroit. Motown brass
whined for years about how a cheap yen made Japanese exports hugely profitable. Now that a weak dollar and
strong yen are hammering Toyota’s profits, Toyoda said in a recent speech, the exchange rates and economic
weakness could force Toyota’s “capitulation to irrelevance or death.”
If he sounds melodramatic, you’ll have to cut the new CEO some slack. In October, Germany’s Volkswagen
passed Toyota in global sales, a fleeting victory for VW but also a sign of Toyota’s slipping dominance. Toyoda is
also wrestling with an ugly recall in the U.S. involving sudden acceleration in multiple models, underused plants in
Japan, and weak earnings that have forced him to cut, among other things, Toyota’s once-sacred research and
development budget. “The company is in a big storm,” says independent auto industry analyst Maryann N. Keller.
“Toyota is facing multiple structural problems at the same time.”
Take the run-up in the yen. When the currency traded between 100 and 110 to the dollar, Toyota’s exports to
the U.S. were hugely profitable. But every one-yen fall costs the company $400 million a year. In the first half of
its fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the strong yen has cost Toyota $3.6 billion. It’s a big reason why Toyota lost
$1.5 billion in the first half.
【題組】48. In line one, the expression Motown brass refers to ____________.
(A) Automakers in Detroit
(B) Any town that makes motor-vehicles
(C) A mobile house in the Motor town
(D) Brass supplier in Motown City, Detroit
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