The Airstar 2.15 cc diesel was an interesting engine in more ways than one! To begin with, although it was presented as a British product, in reality the Airstar was a French design (almost certainly by Roger Fargeas) which originated in 1946 in Paris, France as the Airplan 2.15 cc diesel. After a few examples of the Airplan had been produced, Fargeas left the Airplan company to start his own Ouragan operation. This ended all Airplan production, and the entire Airplan project was eventually taken over by the Luton-based precision engineering firm of J. P. Steward & Co., who also had premises in Paris.

The Steward company acquired the entire stocks of unfinished Airplan 2.15 cc diesel engines and components, along with the rights to the design itself. After Anglicizing the name to Airstar and making a few detail design changes, they produced a limited series of the engines, using many parts which had been previously manufactured in Paris by Airplan, as witness the metric threads encountered. The engines were produced to a very high standard of quality.

The date of the engine's introduction is a matter requiring correction. Although the Airstar has consistently been cited as having appeared in 1947, there's absolutely no evidence to support this contention. Rather, all of the available evidence (of which there's plenty) points to an introductory date of August 1948 or thereabouts. This fact alone may explain the engine's seemingly very short market tenure. Although released in the latter part of 1948, the Airstar was in fact a 1946 design. It started easily and ran well by 1946 standards, but its peak output fell well short of matching that of a number of the more up-to-date 1947 and 1948 designs which had subsequently appeared by its delayed 1948 release date.

That having been said, the engine certainly exhibits a number of highly unusual design features. Among these are the eccentric bearing arrangement for compression adjustment, the elimination of a needle valve in favour of a fixed jet and variable-section air intake and a head seal located well down the cylinder just above the exhaust ports.

Since production numbers appear to have been quite small, the Airstar is a very rare engine today. A full review and test of the Airstar 2.15 cc diesel may be found elsewhere on this website.