Nissan Primera 1994 Front Right Door Glass [6513130] on 2040-parts.com

Honda cutting production in Swindon again – 500 jobs at risk

Honda is cutting another 500 jobs in Swindon It’s only a year since Honda announced 800 job cuts at Swindon (which eventually was 550) and now they’re about to cut a further 500 as weak demand – particularly in Europe – sees the Swindon plant producing just half the cars it could. The plan is to cut shifts from 3 to 2 a day, which will result in the loss of 340 permanent jobs and 160 temporary ones, and production will be centred on just one production line to increase efficiency and flexibility. The Swindon Plant – which builds the Civic, Civic Tourer, CR-V and Jazz (and the Civic Type-R from next year) – has been hard hit by the slump in European sales in the last five years and, despite still strong UK sales, production levels of 120,000 cars a year – just half of the Swindon capacity – are not enough to sustain the current staffing levels.

VW Scirocco GTS & VW Beetle Fender arrive in the UK

Volkswagen has announced two new limited edition models for the UK – the VW Scirocco GTS and the VW Beetle Fender – with cosmetic tweaks. But, despite revealing the Scirocco GTS in Europe in October, it still seemed that VW had no plans to launch the Scirocco GTS in the UK. We did ask VW why, but they didn’t bother to respond.

Greg Migliore: Behind the scenes at the Detroit auto show

Yes, that's a shot of Detroit. In January. Inside Cobo Hall.