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The Honda Civic Hatchback is returning to North America after being gone for nearly a decade.

According to a report from the Nikkei, Honda will build its next-generation Civic five door at its plant in Swindon, U.K., which will begin sending cars across the pond in summer of 2016. Swindon is able to build 250,000 cars annually when running at full capacity, but currently, one of its production lines is sitting idle.

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The report says that about 40,000 to 50,000 Civic hatchbacks will be allotted for North America. The driving factor behind the move is to fully utilize the production facility in the UK, although even these extra cars won’t have Swindon operating at capacity.

Selling the Civic Hatchback in North America will allow Honda to directly compete with the with other available five-door offerings like the Mazda3, Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra and VW Golf. Closely related to the current Fit, the Civic Hatchback has a slightly smaller footprint than the North American Civic Sedan.

[Source: Nikkei via TTAC]

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