CN
III ARCHIVES
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
M
ulti-time British road
racing champion Rog-
er Marshall won the 1988
Daytona Pro Twins (previ-
ously known as Battle of
the Twins) event. It marked
the first time a British rider
won at Daytona on a British
bike. Fans stood shoulder
to shoulder to see the ex-
otic Quantel Cosworth that
Marshall rode. From their
perspective this was a state-
of-the-art Pro Twins racing
machine. Little did many of
them realize that the engine
used in Marshall's winning Pro Twins bike
was 14 years old on a shelf, forgotten and
gathering dust for over a decade in storage
at Cosworth when it was revived by Bob
Graves for Battle of the Twins racing.
Indy Car and Formula One enthusiasts
are very familiar with the Cosworth name.
The British engine maker was founded in
1958 and a decade later Cosworth was
already considered the state-of-the-art
powerplant in Formula One automobile rac-
ing. Norton began discussions with Cosworth in
1973 for the company to build an engine to replace
Norton's venerable pushrod twin. The thought
was if they could just take two cylinders from the
Cosworth's revolutionary F1 engine and make it a
motorcycle mill, they figured they'd already have in
the area of 115 horsepower in the form of a 750cc,
water-cooled parallel twin. That would make the
Norton competitive within the American Formula
750 class. They could also make a production ver-
sion for the Norton street bike.
Unfortunately, the timing was all wrong. Norton-
Villiers was about to go under and the Cosworth-
designed Norton engine, after a brief run in the
British Championships with rider Dave Croxford,
was shelved—it turns out, literally.
Almost a decade later new Cosworth director
Bob Graves rescued the motor from storage and
set in motion the revival of the engine for Battle
of the Twins. Graves, before he worked with Co-
sworth, was the founder of Quantel, a high-tech
company in the UK. With the wealth made from
Quantel, Graves became, among many things, a
THE FORGOTTEN COSWORTH
P108
(Above) Roger
Marshall celebrates
his Daytona Pro
Twins victory in
1988. Bob Graves,
the man who
resurrected the
Cosworth engine,
stands behind
Marshall wearing a
Michelin hat and a
stopwatch around
his neck.
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY
HENNY
RAY
ABRAMS
The infamous Cosworth motor.
