Exercises. Reading: The History of the Ford Motor Company

UNIT 3

Grammar: Past Simple

Past Continuous

Reading: The History of the Ford Motor Company

The Ford Motor Company entered the business world on July 16, 1903 with only $ 28,000 in cash. At that time it was a small company in a Detroit wagon factory with 10 people on the staff.

One year after the company started its operations (in 1904) the foreign expansion programme began.

On August 17, 1904 a modest plant opened in the small town Walkersville, Ontario, with the name of the Ford Motor Company of Canada, Ltd. It was the beginning of an overseas organization of manufacturing plants, assembly plants and a dealer network.

The company had hard times in its first years, young Henry Ford, as chief engineer and later as president, directed a development and production programme. Some of Ford cars were experimental and never reached the public. But some of their models were an immediate success.

During the years of its fast expansion the Ford Motor Company was producing trucks and tractors (in 1917) it bought the Lincoln Motor Company (in 1922), built the first of 196 Ford Tri-Motor airplanes which in 1925 America’s first commercial airlines used with a great success.

In 1942 the civilian car production stopped as the company was working for the U.S. war industry. The huge wartime programme was producing “Liberator” bombers, aircraft engines, jeeps, tanks and other types of war machinery.

Ford was the first international company. In 1914 it had assembly plants in Canada, Europe, Australia, South America and Japan. The real opportunity to become a global company came with the electronic revolution of the late 1980s. In 1987 Ford launched a computer-based system that linked manufacturing and engineering groups in Ford factories all over the world. Now Ford represents itself in 200 countries around the world. It is the world’s second-largest industrial corporation and the second-largest producer of cars and trucks.

Although Ford is better known as a manufacturer of cars, trucks and tractors, it now produces a wide range o f other products such as industrial engines, construction machinery, glass and plastics. And Ford has a good reputation in other businesses: financial services, insurance, automobile spare parts, and electronics.

Ex.1. Answer the following questions using the text.

1. What did a small Detroit factory produce?

2. What range of products did the Ford Company produce in wartime?

3. What does the Ford Company manufacture nowadays?

4. When did the foreign expansion programme of Ford begin?

5. Where did the Ford Company start its first overseas manufacturing plant?

6. How did the company develop in its first years?

7. In which countries did Ford have assembly plants in 1914?

8. What were the stages of the Ford fast expansion before the Second World War?

9. When did the Ford Company turn from an international into a global one?

10. How did the development of electronics affect the activities of the company?

11. What is the position of the Ford Company in the modern business world?

Ex.2 Speak about the events which took place in:

1903, 1904, 1914, 1917, 1922, 1925, 1942, 1987

Ex.3. Find in the text these numbers and say which information they give us:

10, 196, 200, 28000

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