Cosworth Engineering was founded in 1958 by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth, two former Lotus engineers; the name joins their surnames. Duckworth left Lotus to start it, while Costin, tied to Lotus by a contract, worked on Cosworth projects in his own time until 1962. Early income came almost entirely from Colin Chapman’s Lotus, and the firm sold engines for Formula Junior and Formula B before concentrating on racing engine development.
In 1966 Cosworth, with help from Chapman, persuaded Ford to buy the rights to its four-valve FVA design and to sign a development contract. That led to the DFV, which first raced in the Lotus 49 at Zandvoort in 1967 and dominated Formula One for years. Cosworth has collected 176 Formula One wins as an engine supplier, third behind Ferrari and Mercedes.
On the road, the Cosworth name appears on the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth and Escort RS Cosworth, and the firm helped with the Escort RS1600, the RS200, the Scorpio 2.9i 24V, the Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 and the Cosworth Vega in the United States. More recently it built the 6.5-litre V12 for the Aston Martin Valkyrie and the V12 for the Gordon Murray Automotive T.50.
Ownership has changed several times. Duckworth sold to United Engineering Industries in 1980, Vickers bought the company in 1990 and Audi in 1998, when the racing division went to Ford. It is now based in Northampton, with facilities at Cottenham and Silverstone as well as in Indianapolis.
