Breaking: Honda Confirms New Civic Type R, Jazz / Fit Based Small SUV and Sports Roadster

There's a whole lot of news - but unfortunately, no pictures, coming out today from Honda's headquarters in Japan where the company's CEO Takanobu Ito outlined the product, technology and business developments through 2015.

We are going to start with the new Honda Civic Type R sports hatchback based on the European market model that is currently undergoing development for an introduction in 2015.

Honda said that this model is designed specifically for the European market, though we could see it being exported to Japan at some point. More importantly, the Japanese carmaker's CEO stated that the Type R is being developed "with the goal of becoming the fastest front-wheel-drive vehicle on the Nürburgring race course".

On a more global note, Ito said that Honda will roll out an all-new replacement for the Fit, also known as the Jazz in Europe, in 2013. Within two years after the initial market presentation, the Japanese automaker will launch a small SUV model based on the underpinnings of the new Fit/Jazz as well as a replacement for the related City small sedan.

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Honda Posts Record All-Time July Record for Worldwide Production

Japan's third biggest carmaker Honda announced today that it set a new all-time record for worldwide production in July with 345,180 cars, up 67 percent from the same month last year.

From the beginning of 2012, Honda has produced 2,507,995 vehicles worldwide, an increase of 66.2 percent over 2011. Keep in mind though that last year's numbers were negatively affected by the impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

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Scoop: First Photos of Honda's Fiat 500-Fighting N-One Mini

Do you remember the Honda N Concept_4 from last year's Tokyo Motor Show? Well, what you see pictured here is the final production version of the small hatchback that is slated to go on sale in Japan this fall.

Sourced from a leaked Japanese market brochure, these scanned images reveal the exterior and interior of the new Honda that will probably rival the likes of the Fiat 500 in the city car segment.

Note that we are not entirely sure about the name, which we translated to N-One (or N-1) from Japanese.

The cosmetic changes over the original N Concept 4, itself a follow up to the 2009 EV-N study, are restrained and include the regular head- and tail lamp fixtures (instead of LED units), and the redesigned tail gate that now sports a thick decorative chrome strip right above the license plate holder.

The styling of the N-One harks back to Honda's original N series of kei-cars from the 1960s and 1970s, and especially the N360, built between 1967 and 1972.

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