Cosworth is a high performance engineering company. It was founded in London in 1958. It builds engines and electronics for automobile racing, mainstream automotive and defence industries. Cosworth is based in Northampton, England. It has North American facilities in Torrance, California; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Mooresville, North Carolina. It also has a facility in Pune, India.
Cosworth has had a long and well respected career in Formula One, beginning in 1963. Cosworth stepped away from Formula One for three years when no team decided to use their engines for . Cosworth returned to F1 in , suppling engines to Williams, HRT, Lotus, and Virgin. The first Formula One engines shipped in January. Cosworth's 176 wins make it the second most successful engine manufacturers in F1, after Ferrari.
The company was founded as a British racing internal combustion engine maker in 1958 by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth (1933-2005) The name Cosworth came by combining their last names. (COStin and duckWORTH). Even thought it was an independent company, it was supported by the Ford Motor Company for many years. Most of the Cosworth engines were named Ford engines.
The company went through a several ownership changes. The business was growing. Keith Duckworth did not want to run the day-to-day business.
Cosworth was sold to United Engineering Industries (UEI) in 1980. Duckworth remained as president for life, and technical involvement with Cosworth. He became a UEI board director. UEI was a group of small to medium-sized technology companies.
UEI was taken over by Carlton Communications in 1988. Carlton wanted some of the audio-visual companies that were part of UEI. Cosworth was a poor fit, so Carlton sold the Cosworth part off.
In 1990, Cosworth was sold to Vickers, a British engineering company.
In 1998, Cosworth was sold to Audi, which is a part of Volkswagen. Hours later, Audi sold the Cosworth Racing division to Ford.
In September, 2004 Ford announced that it was selling Cosworth, along with Cosworth Racing Ltd and its Jaguar Formula One team. On 15 November 2004, the sale of Cosworth was completed to Champ Car World Series owners Gerald Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven They are the current owners of the Cosworth Group.
The road car engine division of Cosworth was renamed Cosworth Technology. It was sold to MAHLE in 2005. Cosworth Technology was then renamed as MAHLE Powertrain on 1 July 2005.
Cosworth has had a long relationship with the Ford Motor Company. This started when Cosworth started building racing engines in 1959. These engines were modified versions of the Inline-four Ford Kent engine for Formula Junior. Cosworth built a engine for the Lotus 7. and engines were built use in Formula B, sports car racing, and the Lotus Cortina. The final version of the Cosworth-Kent, in 1965, was the MAE. It was used in Formula 3 when engines were allowed. This was the dominate engine.
The Cortina engine was also the basis for the FVA, a Formula Two engine introduced in 1966. This engine featured dual overhead camshafts with 16 valves. It produced at least at 9000 rpm. This engine dominated the category until 1971. It was also used in sports car racing as the FVC. The FVA was part of the same Ford contract that gave rise to the DFV.
A larger engine was built for endurance racing in the mid 1970s. The FVC displaced . The FVC produced only .
In 1966, Colin Chapman of Lotus Cars was the founder and principal of Team Lotus. He got Ford to finance Keith Duckworth's design for a new lightweight 3.0 litre Formula One engine. Cosworth received the order along with £100,000 from Ford. The contract told Duckworth to build a four-cylinder Ford-based F2 engine to prove it would work (see the FVA above). After that, a pure Cosworth V8 would be built. The DFV design used a similar cylinder head to the one on the FVA engine with custom cylinder block and crankcase. This created the legendary DFV - literally meaning "Double Four Valve". This engine, and its version were used for a quarter of a century. It was the most successful engine in the history of Formula One / Grand Prix motor racing. With 167 winning races it put Cosworth Engineering on the map. Although designed for Formula One, the engine has been modified for use in many other areas.
The DFV won on its first outing, at the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix. Jim Clark drove a Lotus 49 with the DFV engine. Starting in 1968, any F1 team could purchase the engine. During the 1970s, it was common for almost the entire field to use one of the DFV engines. Ferrari never used a Cosworth engine. Most teams just built a car around a Cosworth DFV and a Hewland gearbox. It won a record 155 World Championship races. The last was the Detroit Grand Prix in 1983 in a Tyrrell driven by Michele Alboreto.
The DFV with 410 horsepower did not produce as much power as some of its rival 12-cylinder engines. It was lighter, resulting in a better power to weight ratio. It was also a structural part of the car.
The DFY, introduced in 1982 was upgrade of the DFV for Formula One with 520 horsepower. While it produced more power, it no match for the turbocharged cars of the day. It was the advent of turbocharged engines which ended the use of the DFY. In 1986 Cosworth returned to the lower levels of racing. They modified the DFV for the newly created Formula 3000. The DFV remained in F3000 until 1992.
In Formula One, a new DFV-based design was introduced for the new rules in . 3.5 litre normally-aspirated (non-turbocharded) engines were allowed. In 1988 Cosworth built the DFR, which was used in F1 by the smaller teams until 1991. It scored its last points in 1990.
The DFV is still being used in Classic F1 racing. The FIA given them World Championship status in 2004.
One of the most successful and longest-lived projects of Cosworth has been its CART / Champ Car engine program. In 1975, Cosworth developed the DFX engine. A turbocharged 2.65 litre engine, the DFX became the standard engine to run in IndyCar racing. It ending the reign of the Offenhauser, and maintaining that position until the late 1980s.
While designed as an F1 engine, the DFV was also used as in endurance racing. Its design led to vibrations putting stress on devices surrounding the engine. It was hard on the exhaust system. The first sports car to use a DFV failed to finish a single race because of repeated breakdowns. The DFV did win the 24 hours of Le Mans twice in its original 3.0 litre form. A special endurance version, the DFL, was then developed. The 3.3 litre was reliable. The 4.0 litre was largely remembered as a failure.
A variant of the Ford Essex engine was developed for the Ford Capris. The Capris were raced in Group 2 in the early 1970s. This engine had a displacement of 3.4 L. The GA was also used in the last few years of Formula 5000 in Europe.
The FBA and FBC engines were found in the Ford Granada and Ford Scorpio Ultima. The FBA came first in 1991, and was also known as the 'BOA'. It was based on the Ford Cologne V6. It was a twin overhead camshaft with 24 valves, and produced 192 horsepower. In 1995, it was updated to produce 201 horsepower. This engine was known as the 'BOB'.
A racing version was also available for a short time. The FBE had individual throttle butterflies for each cylinder. The FBB and FBD engines were developed but never released.
Cosworth increased its work with Ford in 1969. Cosworth developed a double overhead camshaft (DOHC) 16-valve inline four cylinder engine for road use in the European Ford Escort. Working from the Kent block, Cosworth created a 1.6 Litre engine for homologation (standarding) purposes. The camshafts were driven by a toothed timing belt. The name BDA, came from "Belt Drive, A type". Running in Group 2 and Group 4 on either rallying or touring car racing, this engine could be enlarged to 2.0 litres. The standard 1.6 L engine could be used in cars competing overall wins, not just first in class.