Ford Dagenham engine plant in East London is celebrating production of 40 million engines, a truly remarkable milestone for Ford, the factory, and UK car industry. These days the Degenham plant specialises in fuel-efficient diesel engines for Ford’s small, medium, and large cars, but back in the day this site used to practically run Ford by powering important models including the Ford Escort, Cortina, Capri, Granada, and Transit.

Engineering and manufacturing engines since 1931, the Degenham plant’s most important product today is the 1.6-litre TDCi diesel engine for the latest Ford Fiesta ECOnetic model, also featured in Ford Focus, C-MAX, Mondeo, S-MAX and Galaxy models. Over 50 per cent of global Ford diesel engine demand is supplied by Dagenham.

70 percent of production at the site is for Ford cars, with over 270,000 engines produced each year  for Jaguar Land Rover, Mazda, PSA Peugeot Citroën and Volvo.

Ford Dagenham is increasing the number of engines and parts shipped to Argentina, Brazil, China, France, India, Italy, Japan, North America, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and The Philippines – further boosting Dagenham’s production of engines.

Ford has also done some interesting calculations: 40 million engines are enough to stretch 20,000 miles, or four fifths of the way around the globe, when placed end to end. They could also power all of the 35 million vehicles driven on British roads last year, and it’s equivalent to almost three and a half times the total number of people who attended Premier League football matches last year!