Power About Prodrive
Prodrive Ltd. is a motorsport and automotive engineering group based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England. It designs, constructs and races cars for companies and teams such as Subaru and Aston Martin. Its Automotive Technology division based in Warwick provides road car design and engineering consultation for various car manufacturers.
Prodrive is perhaps best known for its involvement in the World Rally Championship with the Subaru World Rally Team.
In addition to its British base, the group has activities in Germany, Detroit and California in the United States, Thailand, China and Australia. Turnover in 2005 was £112 million.
History
Prodrive was founded in 1984 by Ian Parry and David Richards, who is now the chairman of the group. Their first involvement in motor racing was running rally teams for Porsche, MG and BMW, all of whom it had various successes with. In 1987 they expanded into touring cars, running BMW's M3, in the British Touring Car Championship. They were the outright 1988 champions, and class champions in 1989 and 1990. Since then, Prodrive has been almost continuously involved in touring cars, running campaigns for Alfa Romeo, Honda and Ford in British Touring Car Championship and with Volvo in FIA European Touring Car Championship (ETCC).
