Broadspeed Engineering Ltd was a British automobile tuning and engineering company that operated from Sparkbrook, Birmingham, England, principally during the 1960s and 1970s. It was started and run by Ralph Broad, and first became well known for its success in campaigning MkI BMC Minis during the early 1960s. The company also offered a variety of different road- and race-tuning packages for BMC and Ford engines. Ralph Broad began racing in 1955, when he was in his late twenties. In 1959, he bought an early BMC Mini and immediately began to see success racing it, which helped him to sell racing conversion packages to other Mini owners. This arrangement developed into the 1962 establishment of Team Broadspeed, for which Broad himself remained one of the drivers. The Broadspeed cars were often seen as being competitive with the factory works Coopers, especially at the hands of John Fitzpatrick, who had become the team's top driver. Originally built to Cologne specification in 1973 by Broadspeed for Ford Motor Co. Ltd, it was first driven in the Kent-Castrol Belgium Touring Championships where, powered by a 3.0-litre Westlake V6 engine, it won convincingly. It returned to England to compete in the Tourist Trophy Meeting the same year, driven by legendary touring car racer Andy Rouse, before being sold to Bo Emanuelsson who won the 1974 Swedish Championship. In 1975 it was rebuilt by Ford Cologne with a Ford-Cosworth 24-valve V6 engine developing 460hp at 8, 750rpm. Emanuelsson won across Europe with the car and was even faster than Jochen Mass at the fearsome Nurburgring
