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RE: Cosworth: PH Meets

Wednesday 14th August 2013

Cosworth: PH Meets

Behind the scenes at Cosworth, home to car nuts and engines for supercars and land-speed record cars alike

Crossing the threshold of a company like Cosworth is a rare treat for the inquisitive hack and, quite probably, something of a nervy experience for the firm that extends the invitation. After all, companies like Cosworth tend to work very much in the background, where discretion is the name of the game and your future revenue stream very much depends on being able to work on potentially mutually competitive projects side by side without any prejudice or favouritism.

Road car projects made Cosworth 'public'

For every Sierra Cosworth, Mercedes 190E 2.3-16, Subaru Impreza CS400 and - whisper it - Kahn Range Rover you've heard of over the years there have been many, many others reliant on Cosworth expertise you probably haven't. After all car manufacturers don't always like to boast about their reliance on outside help from firms like Cosworth and if secrecy is paramount in that world it's nothing compared with the need to keep schtum about work in F1 and defence.

On the Q-T
Credit to Cosworth's business development manager Chris Willoughby and technical director Bruce Wood for making the first move though and inviting PH along to Cosworth's Northampton HQ. Spread out across a business park, Cosworth's separation in 1998 into, effectively, road and motorsport divisions with the former bought by Audi (and then Mahle in 2005) and latter by Ford means a complicated arrangement of buildings and facilities. Hence Mahle-signed buildings next door to Cosworth ones and an unusual relationship that is, at times, both competitive and cooperative.

Aston One-77 a recent project they can mention

Chris explains his motivation for inviting PistonHeads over the threshold as basically being that, even if he can't tell us about everything they're up to, there are many PHey people working there. Evidence of this is parked outside the front door, the immaculate ur Quattro belonging to Cosworth man Martin Hall opportunistically recruited as a PH Carpool while Bruce's Maserati Quattroporte stands proudly outside as he sighs the sigh of a former Ferrari owner who fully understands the highs and lows of life with a tempestuous Italian.

And Chris? His assertion he 'used to be into rallying' sounds suspiciously modest and later proves to be just that but his attentions are currently focused on the Bucker Jungmann biplane he's restoring. He's never flown it. But is hoping their reputation for being a feistier, more aerobatically accomplished German equivalent to the British Tiger Moth bears out.

Engine hall of fame with Cosworth's greatest hits

Hum of activity
As we leave the boardroom and into the building proper we pass through a room filled with notable Cosworth racing engines ranging from to F1 and Indy car and beyond. One of the coolest comes from the McRae era Focus WRC car - the unit cost was on a par with a contemporary F1 engine apparently. How? By the time the block casting had gone through the mill - literally - it had morphed from a component costing £100 per unit to one costing around five grand.

Appropriately as we walk through the building shudders with vibration as one of the test dynos within fires up and there's a dull hum of revs rising and falling as an unknown engine is put through its paces. It's in one of the 10 original test cells built when Cosworth moved to Northampton from London in 1964, two years before the birth of the defining DFV engine.

'68 Lotus-Cosworth 49B an early DFV user

It doesn't look like a whole lot has changed either, a drone engine for a defence project hooked up to an electrically driven supercharger seemingly robbed off a Mustang to simulate the exhaust back pressure it'd experience at 15,000ft. Newer cells down the road are more advanced and can simulate climate and other conditions but old-school improvisation and technical skill still reigns supreme.

Max headroom
Chris recalls standing in test cells with running engines to take measurements - a risky business given motors would occasionally let go, leaving "con-rods embedded in the walls" as he recalls. These days detailed material analysis means such spectacular events are less common, Bruce also explaining this limits the scope for tuning of the type Cosworth once specialised in for both competition and road cars. "Back in the day a Pinto had a factor of safety of about 1.8," he says, this of course going on to underpin the 500hp-plus YB Sierra engines. These days the tuning headroom in OEM engines is significantly reduced but as Chris says, "If you look at the Sierra Cosworth we were at 100hp per litre but within the next five years or so 300hp per litre is realistic for road cars."

Foundry a hub of old-school technology

Which brings us to the motorsport department and the aborted 1.6-litre four-cylinder F1 engine project previously discussed on PH. Cosworth still won't confirm its rumoured use in the Jaguar C-X75 but Chris hints that lessons learned in this 500hp-plus, 10,000rpm supercharged and turbocharged screamer "could replace engines in the 6.0 to 7.0-litre range" for the next generation of supercars.

Past, present and future
Which isn't to say more traditional projects don't have a place, the 760hp 7.3-litre V12 in the Aston Martin One-77 the most recent in a long-standing relationship that began in 1996 with the construction of the 12-cylinder engine for the DB7 Vantage. "The extreme nature of that project was appealing," says Chris of the One-77, Bruce agreeing and describing it as "a great showcase" for Cosworth's more traditional skills.

Contrast with lab-like development workshop

You get the impression it's a relief to be able to discuss a collaboration like that publicly too, there being an awkward moment later in the tour when the identity of a 'secret' OEM motor on a test rig is blown by the logo on the catalysts. We demure not to discuss it further and talk pistons and blocks for DFVs and BDAs instead - small scale commissions Cosworth still takes on to keep historic race and rally cars operational. From small batches of pistons for Manx Nortons to more specialist casting and forging jobs, you get the impression if it's got an engine and moves the guys here will take an interest.

Bigger picture the future has challenges, the end of the F1 era meaning no Cosworth engines on the grid for next year. As the emphasis shifts from, as Bruce puts it, the "100 per cent motorsport" focus of 20 years ago to the need to reinvent as an OEM player, the latter is now 40 per cent of the business. A recently reported change in leadership prompted a spokesman to say "Our shareholders are now looking forward to a sustained period that consolidates Cosworth's recent diversification into the mainstream automotive, aerospace and defence industries."

Marussia is end of Cosworth's current F1 presence

Motorsport and the transfer of technology from this into high performance road car engines remain the emotional heart of the business though, built on a formidable legacy at the core of the Cosworth brand. The test cells are still rumbling away, the projects remain as diverse and interesting as ever and the guys involved passionate about anything with an engine. All power to their elbows!

Cosworth timeline

1958 - Founded by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth
1964 - Company moves from London to Northampton
1966 - Duckworth signs contract for DFV
1967 - Jim Clark wins on DFV's first competitive outing at Zandvoort
1979 - Casting facility opened in Worcester to build heads and blocks for F1 and Indy cars
1980 - United Engineering Industries buys Cosworth Engineering
1988 - Duckworth retires, Costin becomes chairman of Cosworth Engineering, Costin House opened
1995 - New foundry opened to manufacture cylinder head castings for Jaguar, Rover and Audi
1998 - Cosworth Engineering, manufacturing and casting bought by Audi AG from Vickers trading as Cosworth Technology Ltd; Cosworth Racing Ltd sold to Ford
1999 - Cosworth Racing opens facility in Mooresville North Carolina to supply the US stock car market
2004 - Cosworth bought by Champ Car World Series co-owners Gerry Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven
2005 - Mahle acquires Cosworth Technology from Audi, rebrands as Mahle Powertrain
2006 - Cosworth is the first F1 engine manufacturer to break the 20,000rpm barrier
2011 - Cosworth runs production feasible engine at 300hp per litre on dyno

[Sources: Sky News]

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