Motopower’s Sales and Marketing arm, Firehawk Marketing and Mountune Racing have announced a joint venture to assemble and market the RST-V8 engine.

The 320bhp+ RST-V8 engine has been developed over a period of time from the early 90’s when it first appeared in Gordon Murray’s ‘Lightning’ car. After a period concentrating on Superbike racing, Motopower turned its attention back to the V8 with a design upgrade and it is now fitted in several chassis, including Caterham Sevens.  The development Caterham has already completed 20,000 hard trouble free validation miles on the latest engine.

The engine is a lightweight, high revving, 4 cam, 5 valve per cylinder all alloy unit which weighs in from 74kg. The cylinder heads are currently motorbike castings. Everything else has been designed, developed and manufactured for the engine.

Strong sales interest has meant an expansion is necessary and Mountune, in conjunction with its parent company Roush Technologies Ltd, is able to provide the necessary additional bandwidth, including engine assembly, service and road car certification.

Russell Savory and David Mountain, principals of Motopower and Mountune respectively, have known each other for many years and this project embraces the core skills of both companies and takes the RST-V8 engine forward into low volume production. David Mountain said: “We can see that the potential of this superb engine is huge and we are delighted to be working with Russell and his team on this exciting project. To have an engine range that weighs in from 74kg producing from 320bhp to well over 380bhp is quite something.”

Mountune will handle assembly of the engine and jointly market the product with Firehawk Marketing. This will leave the Motopower team to concentrate on further engine developments and assembly for special projects.