The AE diesels represented the return of England's Dennis Allen to model engine manufacture following some years spent making glow-plugs after ending his previous involvement with the Allen-Mercury and Merco ranges. Allen's new company was called Allen Engineering, the initials of which gave the AE range its name. The series was launched in the early 1990's.

The engines departed from normal series-production methods by using no castings, the crankcases being milled from bar stock and finished with a black anodizing treatment. The range comprised engines having displacements which ranged all the way from 0.1 cc through 0.2 cc, 0.5 cc, 1.0 cc and 1.5 cc up to 2.5 cc. All were built to a generally similar design. Apart from the tiny radially-mounted 0.1 cc unit, all models were beam mounted. Although no record-breakers, they were useful sports diesels which ran well. The little 0.1 cc model was somewhat finicky, although it too ran fine once the owner got to grips with it. Quality of that model was admittedly a little variable - the extremely high level of precision required seemed to be stretching the production capabilities of the manufacturer.

Like Dennis Allen's earlier A-M series, the engines are identified as "AE" with a suffix formed by multiplying the displacement in cc's by 10. Thus the A-M 15 is a 1.5 cc engine, not a 0.15 cuin. unit, while the AE 25 is a 2.5 cc model. However, the matter is rather confused by the fact that the AE engines below 1 cc are not the AE 1, AE 2, and AE 5 as would be expected, but "AE.1", "AE.2", and "AE.5". Hmmmm .....!?!

Production of the range was confined to the 1990's, making good examples relatively rare today. An informative article by the late Ron Chernich on the AE range may still be found on Ron's extremely informative "Model Engine News" (MEN) website.