Prodrive

Prodrive is a British motorsport and advanced engineering group based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England. It designs, constructs and races cars for companies and teams such as Aston Martin, Bahrain Raid Xtreme and Team X44. Its advanced technology division applies this motorsport engineering approach to deliver engineering solutions into automotive OEMs, aerospace, defence, marine and other sectors, which now represents more than half its turnover. Prodrive also has a specialist composite division based in Milton Keynes where it manufactures lightweight carbon composite CFRP and visual carbon components for many supercars and increasingly for the luxury automotive, aerospace and marine sectors.

Prodrive first became well known for its involvement in the World Rally Championship with the Subaru World Rally Team, developing championship-winning cars for Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg, which now reside in the Prodrive heritage collection alongside many other of its classic race and rally cars at its new Banbury headquarters. While the Subaru World Rally programme ended in 2008, today its motorsport manufacturer programmes include Aston Martin Racing in the FIA World Endurance Championship, Bahrain Raid Xtreme in the Dakar and World Rally-Raid Championship and Team X44 of Lewis Hamilton in Extreme E.

The company employs nearly 500 in the UK at operations in Banbury and Milton Keynes.

Prodrive was founded in 1983 by Ian Parry and David Richards, the latter is now the chairman of the group. Originally the company was known as David Richards Autosport before becoming Prodrive in the late 1980s. Their first involvement in motorsport was with the Rothmans Porsche Rally Team, running a Porsche 911 SC RS for Henri Toivonen at the European Rally Championship and for Saeed Al Hajri in the Middle East Rally Championship. In 1986, Prodrive ran a MG Metro 6R4 in British and Irish rally championships.

In 1987, they expanded into touring cars, running BMW M3 in the British Touring Car Championship. They were the outright 1988 champions, and class B champions in 1989 and 1990. There were plans for a works entry with Mercedes during 1993 and into 1994, with Bernd Schneider slated to drive, but plans were shelved. Since then, Prodrive has run touring car programmes for Alfa Romeo (1995) for Honda (1997-8), for Ford (1999-2000 BTCC champions in 2000) and with Volvo in 2002 in the FIA European Touring Car Championship (ETCC).

In 1990, Prodrive started rallying with Subaru, a relationship which lasted until December 2008, when the global economic downturn forced their withdrawal from World Rallying. During the near 20-year partnership, the team won three drivers' WRC titles for Colin McRae (1995), Richard Burns (2001) and Petter Solberg (2003), as well as three manufacturers' titles in 1995, 1996, and 1997.

In the winter of 1998, the company were approached by Russian oil company Lukoil to enable them to enter motorsports sponsorship. As entries to Formula 3000 were restricted, Richards agreed a deal with family friend Christian Horner that Prodrive would take a 50% stake in Horner's Arden International, in return for Horner retiring from driving and becoming team manager. As a result, Arden signed Viktor Maslov as a driver under the Lukoil deal from 1999.

In 1999, investment group Apax Partners bought 49% of Prodrive. Horner hence exercised the option to buy back the Prodrive stake in Arden. In 2007 Apax sold their investment in the business and in 2008, The Investment Dar company, based in Kuwait, acquired a share of the business.