Toyota Corolla Ke70 Te71 Voltage Regulator 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.

Citroen Cactus concept (2013) first pictures of Frankfurt crossover

Citroen is planning a new crossover model that’ll launch in early 2014. The Citroen C4 Cactus joins the Hyundai ix35 and Kia Sportage in battling the all-conquering Nissan Qashqai soft-roader. The Cactus Concept is the dressed up preview of the production model, which goes on sale in early 2014.

One Lap of the Web: Key chains, Jay Leno and the Ford Fiesta

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- Speedhunters.com gives us a sneak peek of some photos in its #MaximumAttack book.