Rebirth of England.

"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 as a British racing internal combustion engine manufacturer in 1958 by Mike Haidongqing and Keith Duckworth. In the early days of the company's establishment , 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$2 million, did not use the "Cosworth" trademark. Rights licensed for for-profit purposes.

Cosworth Technology发动机团队对奥迪车厂的贡献相当显著，最明显例子的就是用于奥迪 S4、奥迪 S6与奥迪 A8上的那一具4.2升排气量V8发动机；用在S6时仅有340匹的动力输出，一由考斯沃斯团队接手，换上两颗KKK的低增压(0.8 bar)涡轮之后，动力立刻暴涨到450匹(用于RS6车型)，最大扭力(413 lbft)仅1950 rpm就到达，一路延续到5600 rpm为止。

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 1000 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 F, 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 1% of the shares of the F90 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 F5 rules that occur every 6-1 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&D investment budget of more than 1 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.