英语六级阅读备考练习题及答案（16）_大学英语阅读

英语六级阅读备考练习题及答案（16）

　　In June 1959, the Honda racing team brought their first motorbike to compete in the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race, then the worlds most popular motorcycle race. This was the first entry by a Japanese team. With riders Naomi Taniguchi, who finished sixth, Teisuke Tanaka, who finished eighth, and Kiyoshi Kawashima, who would later succeed Soichiro as Honda Motor president, as team manager, Honda won the manufacturers prize.

　　However, they were not pleased with their performance. Kawashima remembers: We were clobbered. Our horsepower was less than half that of the winner.

　　Learning from this experience, Soichiro and his team worked even harder to make rapid progress in their motorsports activities. Two years after their first failure, they were the sensation at the TT by capturing the first five places in both the 125ce and 250cc classes. The upstart Japanese had outclassed all their rivals. As a result of the teams stellar performance, the Honda name became well known worldwide, and its export volume rose dramatically. Soichiro seemed to have foreseen the future of Japan, which, twenty years later, was to become one of the worlds leading economies.

　　Honda would become the most successful manufacturer in all of motorcycle racing. Honda has since won hundreds of national and world championships in all forms of motorcycle competition.

　　While Honda oversaw a worldwide company by the early-1970s , he never shied away from getting his hands greasy. Sol Sanders, author of a Honda biography, said Honda appeared almost daily at the research lab where development work was being done. Even as president of the company, he worked as one of the researchers, Sanders quoted a Honda engineer as saying. Whenever we encountered a problem, he studied it along with us.