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Honda today shut down its Swindon factory for four months, in a bid to reduce costs during the global recession. It had originally intended to stop production for just 50 days.

All production at the Swindon site, where both the Civic and CRV are made, will cease during February, March, April and May. It will resume in June at a reduced rate.

The company believes that decisive action at this early stage will put Honda in a better business position as the market stabilises. “We aim t...Read the full article

Honda's Swindon plant is perhaps one of the mose successful stories of modern British Industry, until now. A maker like Honda with a more mainstrean product portfolio is still looking at a year atleast to come back to normal, thats despite launching a new Jazz.

If thats the case with Honda what are the chances of the likes of JLR, Bentley, Aston etc. i dont think these guys or their parents can hang aroung for a year in 'Hibernate' mode.

 Perhaps in another year all thats left of the UK car industry will be a couple of mainstream makers using UK as one of the hundreds of global assembly points to feed local demand.

 All the recent Govt. announcement to revive the UK car industry hasnt made much sense to me and in no way am i encouraged to buy a new car, which seems to be the primary problem.

 All this money to be spent researching Cleaner leaner cars, whats the guarantee that this technology wont be used globally by their parent cos. rather than be the trump card for locally made cars. Nothing makes sense anymore.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but world governments should have stepped in when oil soared to nearly $150/barrel.  The financial market meltdown was one sector of our economy - but the price of oil affects all sectors.  History has shown us that tough recessions go hand in hand with sudden oil surges (the early 70's and again in the early 80's) - how did we miss this one again - maybe we were blindsided by the mortgage crisis.  The billions of pounds being pumped to rescue companies should have been used to keep the price of oil down.  And it really ticks me off to find out that after their bailout corporate bosses in the US have given themselves $18bn in bonuses for 2008 - watch out for the same in the UK!

It will be interesting to see how the new Jazz sales can prop up production - obviously the once highly popular CRV has slowed like all SUV's and the Civic just isn't good enough anymore, not last time I drove a couple - refinement and ride are just not current.

I can't see the Jazz doing it, I had a day in a brand new current one a couple of weeks ago, as much as I hate them, nothing else does it better in that class. Easy going and refined, well made and flexible - an unbelievable Tardis - feels like your in a big MPV until you get out a walk around it, quite unsettling feeling actually. Not too dear either considering its bomb proof. My point being if there's punters money for this class of car to be had then they should already be chugging along nicely, evolutionarily improved model or not. It would appear they are not struggling to meet demand!

Perhaps a Jazz with a small diesel would be useful, but they don't have any engines to put in it.

compare and contrast:

'"there’s every chance, assuming the global economy improves, that the factory will be back to full capacity within 12 months."'

'there are reports that up to 1000 of the site’s 2400 affected workers are opting for a voluntary redundancy package'

- either productivity will almost double in 12 months time or 'full capacity' will be a shadow of what it was until today.

Let's just wish Honda a speedy recover from this depression.

As for the government's recovery plan, I don't understand it either.   But then I don't understand why they can tell the banks to stop irresponsible lending and that they should be giving out more loans at the same time!   There needs to be a major correction in house prices before the automotive market will recover, and for many that's going to be painful.