Folan Engineering AB

The story of Folan

The story begins with a garage company Motorfirma Lars Nilsson , run in a garage by Lars Nilsson, tuning and maintaining Porsche Race engines and selling and servicing Öhlins gas shocks.

As one client team went in to Formula 2 car racing, the idea of making a 2-stroke car engine was borne. This engine was an inline 5 cylinder 2000cc 2-stroke !! and 2-strokes were banned from car racing as it appeared on the international race tracks. This engine, being a module build was cut down to 2-cylinders and used in sidecar motocross, equipped with a Quife gearbox.

Folan AB was founded 1982 by Professor Fredy Olsson and Lars Nilsson to develop combustion engines for small volume markets. The first project to become a product was an engine developed to replace the Yamaha 750s in sidecar motocross. While the Yamaha was a tunned 4-stroke street engine the Folan was a 1000cc 2-stroke twin , now including gearbox. Cylinders came from Husqvarna 500cc motocross engine, and Development Engineer Urban Larsson at Husqvarna followed the project.

A few years later Husqvarna was sold to Italy and Engineers Lars Nilsson and Urban Larsson teamed up to design a new breed of motocross / enduro 4-stroke engine. Targeted t have similar weight and power as a 500 cc 2-stroke motocrosser. This project called "the lightweighter" was sold to a new formed company called Husaberg and they continued development of chassis and engine. Folan worked as a supplier and subcontractor to Husaberg for some time.

Folan went on to develop a 2-cylinder version of the "lightweight engine". This was a 60-deg 2 cylinder 800cc 4-stroke engine. For this engine new double overhead cams was developed, and a dry clutch. Folan worked with a number of motorcycle builders around this engine. Mainly around concept bikes. 19xx this engine design was taken over by newly formed motorcycle company Highland motors, who still use this concept in a developed form. To be continued.......