Plastic engine set for debut in Norma M-20 concept car

US engineer Matti Holtzberg has teamed up with Belgian chemical company Solvay to work on the Polimotor 2 project.

This is a four-cylinder, double-overhead CAM engine that will be installed in a Norma M-20 concept car to compete at Lime Rock Park, Connecticut.

Using plastic usually raises concerns over how it will deal with the heat in an internal combustion engine.

“Everybody always asks that question,” Holtzberg told The Engineer. “The exhaust port and the combustion chamber is an aluminium casting that’s moulded into the cylinder head and then the pistons run in either a cast iron or a nikasil-coated bore.

“There is metal where the heat is and that is about the only two places. Everything else is a composite material.”

Holtzberg, the president of Florida-based Composite Castings, had success with his first Polimotor engines in the 1980s, when they were used in an Amoco Chemical Company-sponsored racing car.

Amoco eventually stopped competing, but Holtzberg continued improving the engines. The importance of lightweighting and fuel efficiency then led to a renewed interest in the technology.