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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.

Range Rover Sport SVR takes on the Nurburgring – and wins (video)

Range Rover Sport SVR takes on the Nurburgring – and wins (video) We’re not sure at what point a car actually becomes a ‘production’ car, but that’s a tag Land Rover are putting on the new Range Rover Sport SVR as it takes to the Nurburgring and comes away with a time of 8 minutes 14 seconds – the fastest by a production SUV. Land Rover are keen to tell us the lap by the RRS SVR was in a standard production car, by which we assume a car that’s built to the specification announced for the Sport SVR when it arrives next year. That means the full fat 542bhp from its 5.0 litre V8 and performance that is clearly impressive, although Land Rover still hasn’t given us specific performance figures, and certainly enough - together with suspension tweaks – to make it very impressive on road.

2014 New York auto show wrap-up

The 2014 New York auto show is all wrapped up -- at least for the press. We saw some big debuts from Dodge, Subaru, Mercedes and others. Ford and Mazda celebrated big anniversaries with two of their legendary names, and SRT threw out one more Viper to see if it finally sticks.