Engine power

Satara-headquartered Cooper Corporation and Ricardo of UK unveiled their new four and six-cylinder engines at the prestigious 11th Auto Expo 2012 at the Pragati Maidan, New Delhi from January 7 to 11, 2012. The engines provide power ranges of 100-125 kW and 156-200 kW respectively and are made for use in automotive, off-highway and industrial applications, from large forklift trucks to generator sets and construction equipment including earth movers. The Delhi Auto Expo is the largest automotive show in India. Emphasizing the ‘green theme’ and environment friendly fuels/vehicles, the Expo saw 1,500 participants from 23 countries exhibiting their products this year.

Farrokh Cooper and new six-cylinder engine (below)

"This is a milestone achievement in Cooper’s strategic plan to become a world class engine manufacturer and vehicle maker. Ricardo and Cooper have been working together for over 55 years and we continue to work in close collaboration to regularly keep coming up with innovative and path breaking products,” Ricardo India president Mayank Agochiya stated at the launch. "The engines incorporate a range of advanced technologies that make them highly fuel efficient, robust and durable, easy to maintain and provide excellent NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) characteristics,” states a press release from Cooper Corporation Private Limited. The automotive variant meets Bharat Stage IV emission levels while its off-highway counterpart will be capable of achieving the CPCB (Central Pollution Control Board) II emission norms that are applicable from 2013.

Cooper Corporation and Ricardo had launched the first of their new range of Cooper engines — a two-cylinder model available in diesel, CNG and LPG versions — at the Auto Expo in New Delhi in January 2010. Commenting on the successful technical tie-up with Ricardo, Cooper Corporation’s chairman and managing director Farrokh Cooper had stated at the launch: "A man either lives up to his father’s expectations or makes up for his father’s mistakes. I am doing the former with the strategic objective of leaping in the automotive value chain from a foundry and component manufacturer to an engine and vehicle manufacturer. For the engine project, the brief given to Ricardo was that the engines must meet the latest emission standards… the objective was to achieve ‘power without pollution.’”

Cooper Corporation’s Rs 300 crore Mega Project Engine Plant had been inaugurated on December 18, 2010 in Satara, Maharashtra, with a production capacity of 24,000 engines a year and provision for expansion. On the board with Farrokh are his brother Saam and his nephew Zal. The family is proud of its rich tradition of being innovative and successful in rural Maharashtra, in an industry dominated by large multinational companies. Cooper counts among its customers Indian Railways, Cummins India, Atlas Copco, Bajaj India, Maruti Suzuki India and several others, as well as Cummins, General Electric and Kohler in the US, Lombardini, Italy, etc. Besides the diesel and CNG engines and generating sets, the company also exhibited at the Delhi show their range of engine components — cylinder liners, cylinder heads, cylinder blocks, crankshafts, cam shafts, fly wheels, etc — for which they are renowned.