The economic problems of the 1930s hit the business hard, and Leonard Pelham Lee, who had taken over from his father, created a separate division of the company for the fire pumps.

While the motor car engine business suffered during the recession, the mobile fire pump division of Coventry Climax became a great success, particularly during the late 1930s and this continued during the war.

In the late 1940s, the company shifted away from automobile engines and into other markets, including marine diesels, and forklift trucks – plus continuing to make their very successful fire pumps.

With strong persuasions at the show, including those by Cyril Kieft (who had Stirling Moss as an F3 driver) and a young Colin Chapman, Lee concluded that success in competition could lead to more customers for the company, and so the team designed the FWA, a Feather Weight engine for Automobiles.

In general terms, however, the engines were not powerful enough to compete with the 2.5-litre machinery, and it was not until the 2.5-litre version of the FPF arrived in 1959 that Jack Brabham was able to win the world championship in a Cooper-Climax.

At the same time, the company produced the FWE engine for the Lotus Elite, and this enjoyed considerable success in sports car racing, with a series of class wins at the Le Mans events in the early 1960s.

Also, in the early 1960s, Coventry Climax was approached by Rootes to mass-produce FWMAs for use in a compact family car project called Apex with an all-aluminium alloy overhead cam engine combined with a full-synchromesh aluminium transaxle.

At Earls Court in 1962, Coventry Climax chairman, Leonard Pelham Lee announced the withdrawal from building Formula 1 engines, stating that the company was losing money and not gaining enough publicity from their involvement.

In May 1964, the Royal Automobile Club presented the Dewar Trophy, which is given at the recommendation of RAC's Technical and Engineering Committee for the most outstanding British achievement in the automotive field, to Leonard Pelham Lee.

Sir Emmanuel Kaye, also chairman and a major shareholder of Lansing Bagnall at the time, formed the company, independent of his other interests for the purpose of acquiring Coventry Climax.

Within the complicated corporate lineage, the reputation of Coventry Climax as a top-rate engine designer-builder is largely credited to Walter Hassan and Harry Mundy, who designed and developed the FW together.

The following design aspects are credited to these two people, except the last two items, in which Peter Windsor Smith played a considerable role in place of Mundy, who left the firm in 1955 and returned in 1963.

The engine size had increased to 1,991 cc (65 mm bore, 16 hp rating), with overhead valves and Lanchester style vibration damper, it was coupled to a 4-speed Meadows gearbox.

In 1953 it was adapted for automotive racing as the 1,098 cc FWA retaining the cast crank three main bearing construction of the FW but with a distributor ignition in place of a magneto, a different camshaft, and a higher, 9.8:1 compression ratio.

Other FW variants included a short-stroke (1.78 inches) steel crank version of the FWA named the 744 cc FWC, as used by Dan Gurney early in his career in US club racing.

Walter Hassan and especially Harry Mundy having their roots deeply in the racing field, started discussions and preliminary designs of a 2.5L 8 Cylinder GP engine in 1952 without a formal directive from the father and son Pelham Lees.

[citation needed] After the corporate blessing was given to the project with the name 'Godiva', this DOHC, 90-degree, steel crossplane crank V8 engine was built in 1954 for an F1 Kieft with the intention to use the fuel injection system made by Skinners Union (SU).

FPE initially showed 240 bhp using Weber carburettors, but the press at the time reported the rumoured fuel-injected Mercedes 2.5L GP engine is quoted as producing more than 300 bhp, and a corporate decision was made not to release FPE to Kieft in light of the lack of proper fuel injection, leaving the Kieft F1 project, as well as other prospective users, HWM and Connaught, high and dry.

Bored out to 3 Litres and Tecalemit Jackson fuel injection installed, this Emery-built FPE produced 312 bhp on the dynamometer at Chrysler's Kew facility.

[19] Remnants of other FPE parts were much later found by the then-owner of 1954 Kieft F1 chassis, Gordon and Martyn Chapman, in an air-raid cellar in the abandoned building which used to belong to Bill Lacey (of Power Engines Ltd., a Coventry Climax specialist) near the main entrance of Silverstone Circuit, including 3 blocks, 2 cranks, 16 cylinder heads, 20-some cam covers (carriers?

), two card boxes full of timing gears and camshafts, which all belonged to "Doc Murfield" who had purchased the parts from Andrew Getley in 1968-69 and had entrusted them to Bill Lacey.

Designed in 1955 and becoming available in 1956,[21] it had gear-driven camshafts, steel alloy cylinder sleeves, and individual oil scavenge as well as pressure feed pumps for a dry sump system.

The successful bid by a portable pump driven by the 38 bhp FW mounted in a steel pipe frame resulted in a 5000 unit supply contract in 1952.

FWMC became known for the unusually loud and high-pitched exhaust note when installed in a specially made super-light version of Lotus Elite run by UDT Laystall at 1961 Le Mans 24 Hours.

However, coinciding with the promotion of Peter Windsor Smith as the Chief Engineer (reporting to Walter Hassan) in 1960, Coventry Climax reverted (as in OC and JM engines) to using the metric system for specifying piston and crankshaft sizes, so FWMV cylinder dimensions were 63 mm (2.4803 in) bore and 60 mm (2.3622 in) stroke, ending up having almost no parts interchangeability to FWMC despite having an extremely similar piston and cylinder-head design.

Initial developments resulted in 181 bhp (135 kW) at 8500rpm soon after, but Jack Brabham at Cooper and Stirling Moss at Rob Walker Racing Team suffered over-heating problems while enjoying a great amount of power for the rest of the season.

For 1963, Coventry Climax was able to convince Lucas to supply the cogged belt-driven fuel injection system originally developed for BRM with then-unique sliding throttle plates with four round intake bores cut-out.

By the middle of the 1962 season, Peter Windsor Smith and Walter Hassan were convinced that the only viable route to more power was through higher revs, and the decision was made, partly in light of Harry Mundy's experiences on the 1.5-Litre supercharged BRM V16, to develop a 1.5-Litre flat-16 designated the FWMW.

Design work started in 1963, and a prototype was running on the bench in late 1964 with two flatplane flat-8 cranks end-to-end, shrunk-fit to a central spur gear at 90 degrees phase shift to each other[a].

This engine was initially conceived in 1954 for the Le Mans 24 Hour Race by combining two Jaguar XK cylinder heads on a common 60 degree block.