In the latest news, Honda has introduced a new efficient focused diesel engine tah will power not only European Honda Civic models, but also the local, australian variants too. The Australian variant, Honda Civic hatch will be debuted from mid-2013, where the 1.6-litre Earth Dreams Technology turbo diesel will only be available with a manual transmission.
The all new 1.6-litre i-DTEC engine gushes out 88kW of power and 300Nm of torque at 2000rpm, while emitting 94 grams of CO2 per kilometre and using 3.6 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres on the European combined cycle. The new engine will be built at Honda’s European manufacturing facility in Swindon, England, on a newly installed purpose-built diesel engine production line capable of producing up to 500 engines per day, alongside the existing 2.2-litre i-DTEC engine. Honda has reportedly said that the 1.6-litre i-DTEC diesel engine will be installed in all new Honda CR-V before its Earth Dreams Technology philosophy is applied to future powertrains, whereas CR-V’s which will be Australian bounded will be mounted with 2.2-litre unit, which will be available with an automatic transmission, will be targetted against the likes of Mazda CX-5 diesel.
Project leader for the new engine, Tetsuya Miyake, said Honda’s approach for the powerplant was entirely new from the ground up. “There were no benchmarks for us because those targets would have been too low. We were determined to establish a benchmark of our own that our competitors would have to follow,” Miyake said.
Honda Australia director Stephen Collins says he vows to “make the premium between petrol and diesel models competitive”.
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