Competition Cams 627-16 Super Lock Valve Spring Retainer Lock 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.

The thinking man’s M3: Alpina D3 Bi-Turbo is world’s fastest diesel production car

German tuning firm Alpina has been tweaking BMWs since it started back in 1965 – in fact, it helped BMW develop the legendary 3.0 CSL, so it seems it knows its onions. However, its latest effort is something a little different. Not quite a conventional performance car, the 2013 Alpina D3 Bi-Turbo is actually the world’s fastest diesel production car, according to the firm.

More photos, details of new Audi A1 (2010)

Audi has started the countdown to the official unveiling of the new 2010 A1 supermini. Ahead of the A1’s world premiere at the 2010 Geneva motor show in March, Ingolstadt has launched a 22-step (yes, there are 22 parts to this tease) programme that will showcase Audi's new Mini challenger over the next three months. Rather than write 22 separate stories on the new 2010 Audi A1, we thought it'd serve you better to add all the updates to a single page.