‘We managed to easily exceed our 295bhp target for the Volvo 4.3 V10’
a ‘white bread’ kind of brand, but if that’s the worst criticism that you can make of a product then it must be pretty good.’
Q I’ve got to ask you about the fabled 4.3-litre V10 engine you designed for Volvo… ‘Cosworth was tasked with developing a V10 concept for the new S80. It had to be transverselymounted and all-wheel drive, which was a challenge. I think there were five test mules created in Sweden, using widened shells of the 900 series.
We used a balancer shaft in addition to balancing weights on each of the crank webs. The engine ended up being four times better balanced than an i5 engine half its size, and we managed to easily exceed our 295bhp target, despite an incredibly tight time-frame.
One thing I was particularly chuffed about was the way we cooled the cylinder liners. Everybody likes wet liners because you get better cooling than with a dry liner where the coolant cools the block before the liner. Sometimes engineering wet liners is a faff because they have to be sealed and positioned accurately. For the V10 we used dry liners, but with the top lip wetted by the coolant. It worked really well. There was a big splash in
Autocar about the V10 in the summer of ’96, but we reckoned the story was leaked by Volvo’s middle management to pressure their bosses to put it into production. Sadly, that never happened.’ Q Working with Cosworth must have given you some high-octane experiences, too? ‘Oh yes. Aston Martins, Lambos, all sorts of stuff. In the dying days of the Diablo, I had an opportunity for a test drive with their chief engineer in a yellow run-out model. It was like going really fast in a king-size bed! At one point I saw a blob catching me up, it went – wham! – straight past me. It turned out to be the only other example of this car that existed. The chief engineer and I were both convinced that Lamborghini needed its own engine, and Audi promised them it wouldn’t have an Audi engine, but before long it had the Audi V10 and they were giving it new cylinders. But it’s not really the right geometry for a Lambo – it’s very long-stroke.’ Q What do you look back on as your best work? ‘I’m actually most proud of the Triumph bike engines. But the most significant work was probably the later 1.6 and 1.8-litre petrol engines for the Volvo S40 family, simply because of the scale of production. We had the job of mapping them and coming up with cost-effective ways to optimise them for better emissions and performance. ‘We did get some insight into the difficulties in working for a major OEM. On the 1.6 we had the opportunity to make a massive improvement with a small change to the piston crown. But the piston engineer resisted because it was already signed off. Common sense won through in the end, but it was a tragic example of silo mentality in big companies – people get territorial. It needs somebody high enough up in the business to see the big picture. But Volvo were generally very good. There were plenty of people working unpaid overtime just because they wanted to ensure that a good job was done. That was really impressive.’ Q How has engineering changed over the years?
‘It’s harder to have an individual influence on a design nowadays, because of the huge teams involved and the sheer complexity. When I look back to my time at Triumph, that was probably the last time that just one person could be in charge of a new range of motorbikes and engines. Every field of endeavour is now so specialised that you need people who are clued up on each area to take the lead on it. How do you manage people who know more than you do? That’s a skill in itself – and a whole other debate!’