Honda Civic Mugen 200″ title=”Honda-Civic-Type-R-Mugen-production-Front-Angle-588×527″ width=”150″ height=”150″ class=”alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-665″ />The Mugen 200 will also feature 19 inch ‘Lightning’ alloys, Mugen badges and a unique Mugen number plate, as well as Honda’s latest 201PS i-VTEC engine, which means it’ll have quite a lot of kick for a small car.

As its name implies, the Honda Civic Mugen 200 will be limited to just 200 cars and will be available in April. Orders will be taken for the car from Honda dealerships in March, which is when the price will be announced too.

Though it surely won’t be cheap, this model will doubtlessly be fought over by small car and Honda Civic enthusiasts. Maybe Honda will be nice to us and let us review one.

Owners of small SUVs had reason to feel smug this winter. As Britain shivered beneath a blanket of snow, suddenly they had a good reason for using a 4×4 for the school run. True the school in question was normally closed, but they could certainly get there.

Honda has tweaked various areas to make it ever so slightly better than the model we’ve come to know, and in some cases love. There is improved suspension, better insulation and new 17 inch wheels all designed to improve ride comfort.

The crown of best small SUV car is likely to be keenly fought this year, with a plethora of new contenders on the scene. With these updates the new Honda can hope to mix it with the best.

Most importantly, the car has been built in Honda’s plant in Swindon, which makes it British (kind of).

Honda aren’t the only manufacturer to be entering this particular part of the market. Nissan are also targeting the global small car platform with the new model of their Micra; it seems that cars which are cheap enough to manufacture and sell to emerging markets but are also sophisticated enough for Western markets are the new target for many manufacturers in the small car market.

Honda is looking to use India as its springboard to launch a new series of small cars before bringing then to the European market. The new breed of Honda cars are set to be launched to compete directly with their Japanese counterparts, Suzuki, who currently occupy over 50% of the current car sales within the country with their highly successful Suzuki Swift and Suzuki Alto.

This is a bold strategy for the Japanese manufacturer to take at such a delicate time in the economy, but it is clearly something that they feel will benefit them in the long run. India has a love affair with the car and Honda is very keen to capitalise on a slice of this market.

Popular cars in the country at present are extremely compact and small, which means that the Honda Jazz will probably be considered to be too big to mount a challenge to Suzuki’s dominance. Because of this Honda has gone back to the drawing board and designed a new mini car that currently goes under the codename of the 2CV, hopefully it doesn’t look like the Renault version.
This new car has been touted for release in 2011 – 2012 and it will be going into direct competition with the Suzuki Swift and Alto.

If Honda can manage to bring their same brand of electronic wizardry and efficiency to this new car then it may well be a car that can topple the mighty Suzuki in the Indian car market. One thing that will have a direct effect on the cars success is the price. Initial reports claim that Honda will look to price the car around the annual salary of the average worker within the country. Whether or not this will be deemed to be too expensive is something we will have to wait and see.

Honda’s new hybrid vehicle, the Insight, flew to the top of the best sellers list in Japan having sold more than 10,000 units in April. The car industry in Japan has been in decline for the past decade – unlike the rest of the world whereby the market has been affected by the global credit crunch and economic downturn.

This was seen as a double whammy for Honda whom were the only car manufacturer to experience a rise in sales for April compared to the same time period the previous year (2008). This is evidence that the market can pick up if the product is the one that buyers want and the Insight, the world’s cheapest hybrid vehicle is exactly that as people want economic cars that are eco-friendly.

As Japan look set to introduce a scrappage scheme of their own, Honda expect to shift an extra 100,000 new Honda Insight vehicles. UK sales of the Insight may not be close to the success of the domestic sales, yet the scrappage scheme looks set to improve sales of new Honda vehicles at a time where they desperately need a sales boost.

Workers at the Honda production plant in Swindon have had their salaries cut by 3 per cent to safeguard their jobs. That is obviously a much better alternative to letting go some of the workforce, yet it does highlight the fact that companies as big as the Japanese giants have had to adjust to the slump in sales so any kind of incentive to boost sales must be seen as a positive move.

A discount of £2,000 off a new Honda vehicle is a very attractive proposition, especially when you take into account that Honda cars perform strongly in terms of depreciation. This particular manufacturer continue to lead the pack in terms of engineering innovation and to think that a new Honda Civic can be yours for as little £12,000 thanks to the government scrappage scheme is astounding.

The Governemnet have had their doubters of late, and rightly so in some cases, but the scrappage scheme could well be the antidote to the plight of many car manufacturers.