Bosch 72137ws Oil Filter 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.

New Mercedes GLA SUV: Frankfurt 2013

The new Mercedes GLA SUV (pictured) has debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Mercedes may not have been exactly overwhelmingly good at producing a compact car with the old A-Class, but the new A-Class is a very good little car, and it’s rapidly spawning more variants to mop up more sales. We’ve already got the new A-Class and the swoopy-coupe Mercedes CLA and now we get the compact SUV take on the A-Class – the new Mercedes GLA.

Electric Land Rover Defender Revealed

Perfect for stalking - the electric Land Rover Defender We do tend to bang on about the only use for electric cars being as expensive runarounds in cities, or as toys to play with for the better off. After all, with useless range and sky-high prices electric cars have little going for them. But it looks like Axeon -Europe’s  leading independent developer and manufacturer of lithium-ion battery systems - has found a nice little niche that suits an electric vehicle down to the ground – Safari transport.