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The 2017 Honda Civic Hatchback is here: all turbo, manual optional

The car you see above may look familiar. Honda showed a mildly conceptified version of the tenth-gen Civic hatch in March, and just last week a production model was caught being loaded onto a ship. Now it's finally here and official, and we can tell you that a hatchback Civic will once again be sold in the US starting this fall. Utility lovers rejoice. This new body style joins the somewhat-hatch-looking sedan and the coupe Honda has been selling for about a year. It will be available in LX, Sport, EX, EX-L, and Sport Touring trims, with that last one being a new addition. All will get Honda's 1.5-liter turbo four offered in upper trims of the sedan and coupe, but they won't all get the same amount of power: LX, EX, and EX-L models will use a 174-hp version, while anything that says Sport on the back gets bumped up to a 180-hp tune, thanks in part to the sweet center-exit exhaust you see on the car above. Torque doesn't vary between the trims – it's 162 lb-ft on all of them. The other exciting bit of news is that the hatchback (along with other 2017 Civics) will be available with the turbo engine and a manual – in the same car. (For 2016, turbo coupes and sedans were sold exclusively with the CVT, and the manual was offered only on lower trims with a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter four.) The six-speed stick will be standard on LX, Sport, and EX models, while the CVT will be available on those trim levels and standard on the others. The turbo engine is a charmer, and we have said from the start that it would be that much better with a stick, even though most people will choose the CVT anyway. But yay for freedom of choice. Equipment should pretty well mirror what's available on the same trims in the two- and four-doors, with the exception of that new Sport Touring trim. It sounds like that will be Touring equipment – including the Honda Sensing suite of safety tech (available on other trims), Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support, and LED headlights – plus some more sport-like looks and the power bump. Civic hatches will be built exclusively at Honda's plant in Swindon, England. Fun fact: The last Civic hatch to be sold in the US, the oddball 2002–2005 Si, came from the same factory. Big changes come in the rear, obvs, and include a hatch with glass that's bisected (something Honda loves to do) by a spoiler spanning the taillights.

2014 Honda Grom motorcycle is a 125cc-shot of awesome [w/video]

My very first turn at the handlebars of a motorcycle came courtesy of an MSF Honda CB125. Despite the fact that it wore a very stern sticker on the tank warning all who rode that it was for instructional purposes only and not for legal sale, I wanted nothing more than to ride it past the cones of my license test and straight home. There was just something about the lightweight, low-power machine that just felt right. Now Honda is giving American buyers the chance to take home something similar. Meet the Grom. Yes, it's basically a sexed-up scooter, but that's fine by me.
There's a fuel-injected 125cc single pushing the fat-tired bike around, and a four-speed gearbox handles shifting duty.The smallish 12-inch wheels give the Grom a bit of a goofball appearance, but the handsome bodywork and gold forks help offset the look. Something tells me this joker is more fun than should be legal. Check out a fun video of the bike in action by scrolling down, and while you're there, you'll find a full press release on all of the new Honda powersports models, including the Grom. You can also head over to the Honda consumer site for more information. The bike will land in showrooms this August with an MSRP of $2,999.

2015 Honda Fit production gets underway in Mexico

After two years of construction, Honda's new factory in Celaya, Mexico, has officially begun production of the all-new 2015 Fit in North America. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Honda President and CEO Takanobu Ito both attended the opening and watched the first Fit roll off the line at the $800-million plant. Later this year, Honda will add production of its new Vezel small crossover to the new facility, though the latter is expected to be marketed in North America under a new name.
The Celaya factory will specialize in building subcompact cars by employing cutting-edge tech to use less material and less energy during production. Honda is still constructing a $470-million transmission plant on the campus to build continuously variable transmissions in the second half of 2015. When it's finished, it is expected to have an annual capacity of 200,000 vehicles and employ 3,200 people.
With the facility's completion, Honda now has a 1.92-million unit annual production capacity in North America, and it claims that when Celaya reaches full production, 95-percent of vehicles sold in the US will be built in North America. The new Fit has already proven quite popular in Japan, and now we will have to wait and see if North American buyers embrace it as well. The first new Fit customer cars will hit the roads later this spring, and as Honda spokesman Steve Kinkade tells Autoblog, all Fit models sold in North American will be built at the plant. Scroll down to read the full press release about the Fit and its new Mexican home.