Ilmor

Ilmor is a British independent motor racing engineering company that designs and builds high-performance engines. Mario Illien and Paul Morgan founded it in November 1983 after breaking away from Cosworth, where both had worked on the DFX turbocharged methanol engine for CART Indy car racing. Its manufacturing is based at Brixworth in Northamptonshire, with maintenance offices at Plymouth in Michigan. The company first built Indy car engines for Chevrolet with backing from Roger Penske, and in the 1990s it partnered with Mercedes-Benz to power Formula One cars for the Sauber and McLaren teams. Mercedes steadily increased its stake until it owned that business outright and renamed it Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines in 2005, the year Illien bought the Special Projects part of the company in partnership with Penske; that independent company is again called Ilmor Engineering Ltd. Today it supplies engines and consultancy to the IndyCar Series, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, the ARCA Menards Series and MotoGP, and has diversified into marine, defence and other engine work.