Unit 3 Out of Step
SectionOne Pre-reading Activities
Watch the movie clip and answer the followingquestions.
Script:
Narrator:A German factory builds one of the world’s most famous cars. The 911 is theicon of the sports car industry. It’s the shape, it’s the engine in the back,it’s the feel it gives you, it’s the emotion. The factory runs like a precisionmachine, building hundreds of engines a day. The product and our manufacturingprocess are one unit, and that’s our secret of success. Automation, technologyand skilled human labor combine to build 16 versions of the Porsche 911,including the 911 GT3.
Questions:
1. Where isthe engine of the 911?
2. What’sthe secret of success of that factory?
1. Car culture has been amajor niche lifestyle in America.
2. Inthe 1950s, the post-war boom produced a generation of teenagers with enoughincome to buy their own cars. These cars became so much more than just modes oftransportation. They were reflections of a lifestyle. The ability to tune andsoup-up muscle cars gave average Joes the opportunity to show off their power,their speed and their style in a way that personified the car as character.
3. LikeGranny in Jan and Dean's 1964 song “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” we can't keep our foot off theaccelerator.
4. We arecrazy about our cars — and always have been. “TheAmerican,” William Faulkner lamented in 1948, “really loves nothing but hisautomobile.”
5. Wedream of cars as we dream of lovers.
6.Americans have always cherished personal freedom and mobility, ruggedindividualism and masculine force.
