Mugen wants hot Honda Jazz

Honda’s UK-based performance tuning division has admitted to a desire to develop a hot version of the Japanese manufacturer’s Jazz supermini.

Staff at Mugen Euro, the Northampton-based firm responsible for a supercharged version of the CR-Z hybrid that’s likely to make limited production, say they’ve long envisaged producing the most unlikely of hot hatches, using Honda’s practicality-focused five-door.

Mugen already offers a number of styling upgrades and some tuning parts for the Jazz in Japan, where the car is known as the Fit, but the performance increases are small. Mugen Euro’s idea is for much more hardcore version of the car.

To achieve the necessary performance gains, Mugen Euro management say they could use either the CR-Z’s supercharged hybrid powerplant - or a normally aspirated, high-revving 2.0-litre VTEC unit similar to that used in the last Civic Type R.

“Always in the back of our mind as a car that we’d like to do is the Jazz,” revealed Mugen Euro’s general manager Colin Whittamore.

He said that it “wouldn’t be much of a stretch” to fit the 197bhp supercharged version of the CR-Z’s 1.5-litre hybrid motor, currently being dyno-tested by Mugen in the UK ahead of a public debut at the Goodwood.