Chapter 495 Car Engine

"Currently, our engine production, after remerging with Cosworth, has one production plant in England and one in the United States. If the sales of our joint venture brand in China are satisfactory, we will consider setting up a new production plant in China. ”

This time Barron came to the Cosworth North American headquarters in Michigan. As part of their acquisition agreement with Ford and the Volkswagen Group, the Inland Motor Group acquired the Cosworth Engine Company, which had been split into two. , which will be the main platform for British Automotive Group's future automotive engines.

In fact, Cosworth is also a British automobile engine manufacturing brand. Initially, the company was founded by Mike Haidongqing and Keith Duckworth in 1958 as a manufacturer of internal combustion engines for British racing cars. , staffed by former employees and employees of Lotus Engine Ltd.

However, the company later changed hands many times. In 1998, as an accessory to the Volkswagen Group's acquisition of Rolls-Royce, Cosworth also became part of Volkswagen.

But within just a few months, Volkswagen split Cosworth in two, and the racing engine division was sold to Ford Motor Company - Ford used it as a high-performance engine research and development department and provided engines to the Jaguar F1 team. .

Five years later, at the end of 2004, Ford announced that Jaguar would withdraw from F1, and Cosworth once again faced the fate of being sold. As a result, the F1 team was sold to Red Bull, and Cosworth Racing Engine Company was also sold to the American Championship Series ( Champ Car series) owners Kevin Kalvin and Gerald Furst.

However, Red Bull Racing later announced that it would no longer use Cosworth engines in the 2006 season. Subsequently, many teams also changed engine manufacturers, most of which switched to Ferrari and Toyota engine platforms. Therefore, Cosworth's racing engine production The company is facing a crisis.

At this time, after the Caesars Fund successfully acquired three British car brands from Ford, it acquired the Cosworth Racing Engine from Kevin Kalvin and Gerald Forster for less than US$100 million. The company bought it.

After acquiring the Cosworth Engine Company, Audi, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, split Cosworth into two parts. Its civilian vehicle engine production and manufacturing department was renamed Cosworth Technology, while the racing engine department bought back by Ford was renamed Cosworth Technology. It's called Cosworth Racing.

But both companies retain the historic name "Cosworth".

It is worth mentioning that at that time, Audi only needed the plant's rich engine research and development technology, so in the agreement with Ford at that time, Cosworth Technology, with an annual turnover of US$250 million, did not use the "Cosworth" trademark. Rights licensed for for-profit purposes.

The contribution of the Cosworth Technology engine team to the Audi car factory is quite significant. The most obvious example is the 4.2-liter displacement V8 engine used in the Audi S4, Audi S6 and Audi A8; when used in the S6, it only has 340 horsepower. As soon as the output was taken over by the Cosworth team and replaced with two KKK low-boost (0.8 bar) turbines, the power immediately jumped to 450 horsepower (for RS6 models), and the maximum torque (413 lbft) was reached in just 1 , continues all the way to 5.

Cosworth's skill can also be seen in the variable intake manifold - the S6's V8 engine is still equipped with a two-stage variable intake manifold, but the RS6 does not need it at all.

Although the strength of the Cosworth Technology engine plant is impeccable, Audi still decided to give it up due to practical considerations. Another reason is that Cosworth Technology, which employs more than 1,000 employees, is far away in Northamptonshire, England (there is also a production plant in North America). Center), far away from Audi's German headquarters.

Therefore, Cosworth Technology was also purchased from the Volkswagen Group as part of the Caesar Fund's acquisition of Bentley.

After the establishment of the British Automobile Group, they once again merged Cosworth Technology and Cosworth Racing to become Cosworth Engine Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the group, to provide power systems for their future products.

And Aston Martin, a subsidiary of the British Automobile Group, also has plans to return to the F1 arena - the last time the Aston Martin team appeared in the F1 arena dates back to the middle of the last century.

In 1959, after winning the Le Mans 24 Hours championship and the World GT Sports Car Championship's annual manufacturers' championship, Aston Martin Racing withdrew from the formula racing scene.

The main thing is to participate in F1 events, which is too expensive. With the strength of Aston Martin, it is impossible to compete in the F1 arena without the support of a wealthy group.

But now the British Automobile Group needs to rebuild the image and popularity of its brands. For a brand like Aston Martin that mainly produces supercars, it is still very important for the brand image to appear in top events such as F1 - you all If you don't have a good name in F1, and you don't even appear in F1, how can you give people the confidence to buy your high-performance sports car?

Also, the F1 race itself is in the hands of Barron, and the Pioneer Sports Group he owns holds 90% of the shares of the F1 Group - you know, when a new team enters the F1 race, the timing is very important, and the ideal time In this state, I took advantage of the major changes in the F1 rules that occur every 5-6 years, especially when the power unit rules undergo major changes.

Otherwise, even if the new team enters the track, it may only get ashes.

Because usually, one year of experience in using a power unit can bring about an increase of almost 40-60 horsepower in the second year. These horsepower advantages are enough to close the gap in aerodynamics by one level!

If a brand spends a lot of money to enter F1 and is lapped in every race, then how can they sell their civilian cars?

Now Aston Martin's opportunities are very good. There is not only the British Automobile Group's annual R\u0026D investment budget of more than 100 million pounds, but also the F1 competition, which is preparing to make rule changes next year. Therefore, in 2007, Aston Martin The Don Martin Racing Team will appear in the F1 arena to promote their upcoming new supercar models and SUV models.

In addition, Bentley currently uses the W12 engine from the Volkswagen Group. However, it is impossible for the British Automobile Group to say that it will always let the engines of its top luxury car brands be in the hands of others.

Therefore, in addition to continuing to improve their V8 engines, Cosworth will also continue to promote the development of its own V12 engines.

As for production, the British Automobile Group currently produces vehicles in a total of six factories, five of which are in England, namely Bentley's two factories (Crewe factory and Wolfsburg factory in Germany); Aspen Martin has a factory in Warwick, England; Land Rover has two factories, Solihull and Halewood; and Jaguar has a factory in Birmingham.

The plan to take over the British Automobile Group is to build new factories overseas, including Austria, Poland and Brazil, as well as a joint venture factory in China.

The local production capacity in the UK will gradually be merged, and the production of the two ultra-luxury car brands, Bentley and Aston Martin, will mainly be retained. As for Jaguar and Land Rover, they will gradually move their production capacity overseas, which is also to control the production of complete vehicles. cost.

In terms of joint venture factories, in addition to Nanjing Automobile's original production base, Nanjing British Automobile Group has also signed an agreement with Jiangsu Province to build a new joint venture production base in Kunshan. In the future, it will be used for Jaguar, Land Rover brands and some Production of Cosworth engines.