Homepage Gallery Contact History Sevices & prices HistoryBack in late 1996, after enjoying indoor karting for 3 years with some success, Richard Johnson at the 'youthful' age of 42 acquired a '95 Wright pro-kart. At the inaugural test run at the small concrete circuit Whilton Mill (the national track didn't exist at that time), Richard met another driver also on his 1st test run - Ken Cherry driving a '95 Knight.Richard with his 'engine manufacturing' technical background enjoyed preparing his own motors and soon lent a helping hand looking after Ken's engines as well. After further test sessions at Whilton they decided to take the plunge & both enter their first race at Stretton in 1997.In 1998 Richard went on to win the Stretton Drivers Championship '1hr Sprint' on the Wright, using self prepared engines.For 1999 Richard entered the Ancaster pro-kart championship, went quite well and learned much from more skilled and experienced younger drivers, realising an up-to-date chassis was needed! At the start of 2000 Richard & Ken both acquired brand new Solo pro-karts and in late 2000 Ken hatched an idea to start an owner driver series at Caxton.The Caxton Pro-Kart Sprint championship commenced in 2001, organised by Ken. Richard finishing 2nd in the championship that year and Ken finishing 5th with engines prepared by Richard. It had been noticed that GX160 kart engines were appearing at Caxton with various engine preparer's logo's on the air boxes. Some people may know Ken's kart number had always been 51, (after Ken's interest in area 'fifty one' and its connotations with mysterious flying objects) so Richard decided to label the engines 'UFO'.............Ken got a batch of stickers produced. Ken finished 3rd in the 2002 Caxton Pro-Kart Sprint Championship, went on to win the championship in 2003 and in 2004 finished 3rd, all with 'UFO' engines prepared by Richard. Following redundancy from the Corporate rat race in 2005, Richard launched UFO Kart Engines in 2006 as a business; and also accepted the job of Head Of Engineering at a well known large corporate kart track in Milton Keynes the same year, this being totally unconnected with UFO. Before long UFO Kart Engines 'took off' and became a full time operation, at this time the business was entirely Senior Prokart engines. The first Honda Cadet dad to appoach UFO was Mike Chaplin, who's son Billy competed in Honda. From a mix of used engines and components Mike presented, a fairly rapid engine was produced and helped Billy put the 1st UFO powered kart seen at Rye House into pole position for the 2007 London Cup and finishing 5th in the grand final. Billy continued to race, powered by UFO built engines. Mike lent Phil Knott a UFO prepared engine at Buckmore Park following the 2007 London Cup and that led to numerous engines being developed for Phil's son Luke Knott culminating in 2 'O' plate championship wins, London Cup win and Hoddesdon Kart Club championship wins , and 3rd place twice in the S1 British Championship. The story continues........ History of UFO Kart Engines Phone 01933 673575 or 07779 857366 Services & prices Contact Homepage History Gallery To see all content, you will need the current version of Adobe Flash Player to view it. |