JULY 13, 1998

Ford buys Cosworth Racing

THE Ford Motor Company announced on Monday morning that it has bought the racing division of Cosworth. The Northampton company will continue to design and build Ford's competition engines, notably the V10 Formula 1 engines which are used by Stewart Grand Prix.

The main Cosworth company was bought from Vickers at the end of last week by German car manufacturer Volkswagen, through its Audi subsidiary. There was speculation that this would lead to a major motorsport offensive by the Germans but it seems there is little interest in F1 at Volkswagen and Audi and so it was decided to sell Cosworth Racing to Ford. No details of the price have been announced but the deal may be worth as much as $50m to Volkswagen, which paid $110m for the entire Cosworth company. Ford is expected to make a separate agreement with Volkswagen so that it can continue to use the Cosworth foundry in Worcester.

It remains to be seen who will run the Cosworth company, although Ford sources insist that it will be run as a separate identity as is the case with Ford's subsidiary car companies Jaguar and Aston-Martin.

Cosworth's production engine facilities are being retained by Volkswagen with the intention of using them to produce engines for Rolls Royce Motor Cars which Volkswagen also bought last week.