1. Cosworth-powered F1 cars have already won 175 World Championship races. No other engine manufacturer comes close to this record.
2. Cosworth’s original premises were in a corner of a garage in Shaftesbury Mews, in London W8
3. When Cosworth was founded in 1958 it had only one active employee – Keith Duckworth
4. Co-founder Mike Costin did not become an active employee until 1962 – before then he was Technical Director to Colin Chapman at Lotus
5. The very first victory by a Cosworth-tuned Ford engine was in Jim Clark’s Lotus 18 Formula Junior car, at Goodwood in March 1960
6. Famous for his aphorisms, one of Keith Duckworth’s favourite sayings was : ‘Development is only necessary to rectify the ignorance of designers’
7. The first road-car project on which Cosworth worked was the Type TA of 1962, better-known today as the Lotus-Ford Twin-Cam, used in Lotus and Ford models during the 1960s.
8. Cosworth’s first-ever project was to build the jig for a Vanwall F1 cockpit bubble canopy.
9. In 45 years, Cosworth has had four different HQ – after London W8 there was Friern Barnet, then Edmonton, and (since 1964) Northampton
10. When Cosworth opened its new factory in Northampton in 1964, there were only 30 people in the workforce. Within three years, the company had built its first Formula One engine.
11. Cosworth has had a long association with Ford. The first Ford contract was to develop the carburation, manifolding and camshaft profile of the original 1.5-litre Cortina GT road-car engine. Keith Duckworth eventually sold the camshaft profile design to Ford – for Ł750.
12. Cosworth has long been famous for its family of twin-cam engines with four valves per cylinder. The very first four-valve Cosworth-designed engine was the 1.6-litre FVA of 1966.
13. In the 1960s, when they had time for hobbies, Cosworth founders Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin took to the air. Keith bough a helicopter, and Mike a glider.
14. The first race engine to be totally designed by Cosworth was the legendary DFV V8 F1 engine, which was completed in 1967. It won its first-ever race too – a good way to start a glittering career.
15. In only its second season, the Cosworth DFV V8 engine won no fewer than 11 World Championship F1 races.
16. In 1970 Ford chose the Cosworth BDA engine as the very first four-valves-per-cylinder power unit it ever offered for sale in a road car.
17. Over the years, Cosworth Racing has designed F1 engines in 4-cylinder in-line, V6, V8, V10 and V12 form.
18. Cosworth has manufactured more DFV F1 engines (over 500, with all normally-aspirated derivatives considered), a figure that no competitor could match.
19. Cosworth designed and built a complete F1 car in 1968. Naturally a DFV engine was used, but this car also had four-wheel-drive. It was tested, but never raced.
20. Cosworth first designed a motorcycle engine – a 750cc parallel twin unit – for Norton Villiers in 1974.
21. Cosworth was an independent company until 1980, when it first joined forces with another concern, UEI.
22. Although Cosworth has never designed two-stroke engines which were raced, or fitted to road cars, such a research engine – the Type OB – was developed in the early 1990s.
23. How many other companies have designed engines which have won F1 World Championships, the Le Mans 24 Hour race, the World Rally Championship, and the Indianapolis 500 race ten occasions in succession ? Cosworth has.
24. Cosworth’s original founders, Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin, remained with the company until they retired – in 1989 and 1990 respectively.
25. Over the years, Cosworth has not only manufactured road-car engines or cylinder head assemblies for Ford, but for Lotus, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Rolls-Royce and Vauxhall.
26. Cosworth developed the first road-car engine in the world which produced more than 100bhp/litre – the turbocharged YB unit of 1985, a 1,993cc engine which, in the Sierra RS Cosworth, produced 204bhp.
27. The world-famous ‘Cosworth’ name badge has only ever been applied to road cars manufactured by Ford. This exclusive arrangement is set to continue in the future.
28. At least one Cosworth racing engine has produced more than 1,000bhp – the final-specification turbocharged 1.5-litre V6 Type GB Formula 1 engine of 1987.
29. In 1987, Cosworth tested F1 engines with five-valves per cylinder. Power was competitive, but the engineers found that they could produce even more by reverting to four-valve layouts.
30. Road-car versions of the Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth used 225bhp versions of the 2.0-litre YB power unit. In motor sport, however, race—tuned engines produced a reliable 550bhp.
31. The very first road-car engine to carry the proud word ‘Cosworth’ on its cam covers was the 2.9-litre V6 used by the Ford Scorpio 24V, announced in 1991.
32. Over the years, Cosworth has done more than design engines for motor cars. Other projects have included motor cycle engines, automatic transmissions – and development of the revolutionary casting technology which the company foundries use to this day.
33. Designed in the mid-1990s, the WDA V10 was a 4.3-litre engine, intended for transverse mounting in a road car (the client’s identity has not been revealed). As far as is known, such a layout has never been completed by any other concern.
34. With more than 600 employees, Cosworth Racing is now the second-largest employer in Northampton. Only Barclaycard, the Credit Card concern, is larger.
35. Today Cosworth Racing manufactures engines for use in Formula 1, in CART/Champcar racing, in World Rallying, in NASCAR and in MotoGT motorcycle racing. No other company, anywhere in the world, does this.
36. In 2003, Cosworth Racing will supply V10 engines for 30 per cent of the F1 grid, This is much more than any other concern.
37. Cosworth engineers are very versatile. In 1993, when asked to race-tune the Ford-USA 2-litreV6 engine for use in racing Ford Mondeos, the team produced race-winning power units in less than six months.
38. Designed by Cosworth in the mid-1990s, the V12 engine fitted to the Aston Martin Vanquish is currently the most powerful British engine fitted to a British car.
39. The first-ever Cosworth-developed engine to race produced 75bhp, and today’s XFE CART/Champ car engine produces ten times that. Like all of its rivals, Cosworth racing never reveals the power output of its current F1 engines.
40. Almost 60 different F1 teams have used Cosworth engines since the company entered the sport 36 years ago.
41. Cosworth Racing’s experience, and high technology equipment, now allows a new F1 engine to be race-ready in only 9 – 10 months after design work begins.
42. Cosworth Racing engine designs are found in many different cars. One of the most unexpected is the 4-litre single-OHC Ford Type JBB V6, which is used in the Ford-USA Explorer 4x4.
43. Since 1967, Cosworth has developed many different F1 engines for Ford. Including the five engines in the modern CR series, no fewer than 12 different types have actually been raced.
44. When the first Ford-Cosworth F1 engine, the DFV, was launched in 1967, it peaked at 9,000rpm. In 2003, the latest Ford 3-litre V10 F1 engine achieves twice that figure.
45. The new CR-5 engine, which Jaguar uses in its 2003 F1 car is the seventh different type of V10 engine which Cosworth has raced in only eight years. Other types of V10 have been developed, but never appeared in public.
