Toyota vs Honda | Out of the Wreckage | 1
Business Wars
Audible
4.6 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s 1945. Japan lies in ruins in the aftermath of World War II. The population’s starving, the cities are reduced to rubble, and the nation’s defeated. But from the war-torn wreckage, two motor giants are about to rise.
The first is Toyota. It’s the brainchild of Kiichiro Toyoda, the big-dreaming son of a wealthy industrialist who wants to create Japan’s answer to Ford.
But the other contender must travel a harder road. Its founder Soichiro Honda is a poor boy from the sticks and his only resource is his own ingenuity. So he’s starting on two – not four – wheels.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Prime members, you can binge off for episodes of Business Wars Toyota vs. Honda, |
| 0:05.2 | ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:07.0 | Download the app today. |
| 0:10.0 | August 14, 1945, the final hours of World War II. |
| 0:28.2 | In the hills near the Toyota factory in Caromo, Japan, AEG Toyota joins the hundreds of employees |
| 0:34.6 | running towards the company's bombshell. |
| 0:38.5 | In the skies above, the drone of B-29 bombers grows louder. |
| 0:44.2 | The 31-year-old company director clutches his spectacles protectively as he hurries uphill. |
| 0:50.2 | He knows his glasses won't be easily replaced. |
| 0:53.6 | Japan is low on all supplies. |
| 0:56.4 | Even Toyota struggles to get the steel and rubber needed to build trucks for Japan's army. |
| 1:02.7 | AEG feels his heart pounding. |
| 1:05.6 | Each week the Americans drop to atomic bombs and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly turning |
| 1:10.7 | those cities into infernos and obliterating tens of thousands of people. |
| 1:15.9 | AE fears they're about to drop another. |
| 1:20.6 | He feels his terror subside as he reaches the shelter and joins the crush of people, squeezing |
| 1:26.2 | inside. |
| 1:27.5 | As he steps into the gloom, he hears explosions and shutters. |
| 1:42.1 | Three days later, AEG and Toyota's managers sit in the offices of the bomb-damaged factory, |
| 1:48.6 | unsure what to do next. |
| 1:51.1 | The war is over, and Japan is both defeated and devastated. |
| 1:56.9 | Three million Japanese died in the conflict, and millions more are now starving. |
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