Honda dives deeper into motorsport activities by entering the Civic into World Touring Car Championship .

So they called up their in-house performance arm Mugen and J.A.S. Motorsport to turn a normal Civic into a full-blooded racing machine.

Mugen will manufacture and take care of a bespoke racing engine developed by Honda R&D, while J.A.S. will develop the rest of the car, based on the new UK-built Honda Civic 5door. The racing engine is a 1.6 litre 4 cylinder direct injection turbo-charged petrol engine, developed in accordance with FIA’s Super 2000 regulations.

This can’t be good news for makes like Chevrolet or Seat, the current top players in WTCC. Honda will take part in just a few 2012 events as “inaugural rounds” in Japan, China and Macau. Then from 2013 they will take part in every race with a two car team.

“We have made a decision” said Honda CEO, Takanobu Ito “to enter into the WTCC with the European Civic. We will develop a totally new engine for this project and we are all excited about starting this new challenge.”