Here are the new Stream rumours from Japan, according to BestCar magazine. The most relevant quotes from the mag are:

• New Stream is expected to hit the market in July of this year in Japan.
• It’s said to have grown up and be significantly larger than the Civic, but surprisingly not as wide. It’s also said that it will have the centre fuel tank location as in the Fit.
• In the powertrain department they expect the Stream to be powered by both a 1.8L and a 2.0L i-VTEC engines. Displacement is the same as for the Civic (and the 1.8L unit should be identical), but surprisingly enough, BestCar says that the Stream will debut the next generation version of i-VTEC. This system, whose development was announced years ago in one of Mr. Fukui's speeches, is supposed to continually vary both lift and timing. The mag compares it to BMW’s Valvetronic, saying that Honda’s independently developed system would be much cheaper to produce than its BMW counterpart, which is judged by most of the auto-industry as being overly complex.
• On the transmission side there is more news, and it’s the availability of a CVT gearbox in addition to the current 5AT found in the Civic worldwide. As a side note, if I’m not mistaken, Honda has yet to market a CVT transmission with the K20 engine (although they have done it with the K24 in Japan). Will this new engine still be a K series ??

Editorial comments:

• I don’t expect BestCar to be off the mark when they say that the Stream has grown in size, although I remain skeptical about the width.
• I would also say that the information about the engine's displacement and fuel tank position is credible. Would that mean that the Stream will use a non-independent rear suspension as in the Euro Civic 5D?
• As for the new engine and transmission, I personally did not expect the new generation of i-VTEC to come so soon, especially since it was not introduced in the Civic, but well, one year is a lot of time for development, so it could be. Note that the current generation Stream debuted the current K20 engine world wide, and that it was also the Stream platform that Honda used for their first and only Direct Injection gasoline engine so far (the i-VTEC I, that has not made it to any other Honda car as of yet). The Stream sells in much higher numbers than Civic in Japan, especially in the 2.0L class, and maybe Honda wants to wait a little bit before launching their new engine world wide… We’ll soon find out.
• To me the rendering itself seems to be a small modification of current Honda AirWave wagon, which is only available in Japan