Honda will import the CR-V and HR-V into Europe from Japan in order to boost capacity at its Japanese factories.
Honda had previously planned to build the next-gen CR-V for Europe in its Ontario plant, in Canada but instead they decided to focus Ontario production on supplying the North American market, AutoNews reports.
The current Euro-spec Honda CR-V is built in Swindon, UK but the next-gen model will be produced only in Japan. The car maker will also stop exporting the HR-V to Europe from Mexico when its facelift arrives, in 2019. Production of the Euro-spec HR-V will also shift to Japan.
“It makes sense to fill capacity in our own plants in Japan,” Honda’s head of UK operations, David Hodgetts said.
Honda has already moved the production of its European versions of the Jazz to Japan from Swindon and China as the former was decided to become the global production hub for the five-door Civic hatchback.
Japan was the biggest exporter of light vehicles to the EU by value last year, with a total of 577,703 cars, up 20 percent on the year before. This will only increase after the EU agreed with Japan on a new trade deal that scraps the 10 percent import duty on Japanese cars in return for better access to Japan’s food market.
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