Keith Duckworth Dies

Met the guy through a mate when working there, a true gentleman and genuis. He set up Cosworth with Mike Costin, thus Cosworth, in north London to help Colin Chapman develop engines for lotus. Moved to Northampton around 1965 or so. Keith is the man who developed the pent-roof combustion chamber that is in nearly all todays engines. He developed it at the time for the Ford DFV engine in F1, the most wins of any engine ever in F1, even to this day, it also won on its debut with Jimmy Clarke I think.

Cosworth was sold to the Vickers Group and later on to VW, which really only wanted a name, and passed Coswoth over to Audi. They in turn sold Cosworth Racing to Ford, at an enornmous price, and kept Cosworth Technology (where I worked and home of the Ford Coswoth, Audi RS4 and RS6 engines, Astom Martin V12's and many more. This has now been sold to Mahle last year.

Sorry to go on, but Keith Duckworth is one of the greatest engine designers that has ever put a foot on this green earth, and will be missed

John

QUOTE (kvw @ Dec 20 2005, 01:17 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>was cosworth owned by audi at some stage?

The Full Answer:

Audi purchased all of Cosworth (Racing, Manufacturing, Castings & Engineering) in 1998.

Immediately after this Cosworth Racing was sold to Ford in a pre-arranged agreement.

Cosworth Racing remained Cosworth Racing, while the Audi owned bit, Manufacturing, Engineering and Castings became Cosworth Technology.

Within the last year or so:

Cosworth Racing now sold by Ford to an American who as Martin says is the Champ Car Boss.

Cosworth Technology is indeed now owned by Mahle and is called Mahle Powertrain.