History

In 1958 Ernest Van Wingen laid the foundations of the company now called E. VAN WINGEN NV. With engines forever in his heart he started a car workshop annex petrol station in Gent. But car engines soon became too small to his liking, so that the Van Wingen family moved to the inner portside of Gent in 1963 where Ernest focused on diesels as propulsion engines for barges.
McLaren, Dorman and Petter were the brand names which in the company’s records can be traced back as far as 1958.
 

The brand names are found on invoices dating back to January 1958, from
British Oil Engines S.A., This Belgian agency for Mirrlees, Petter, McLaren engines, later merged into Hawker Siddeley, to which also Dorman, the Stafford based engine manufacturer belonged. Afterwards Dorman would be taken over by English Electric Company and GEC.
In between all these take overs on the other side of the Channel, EVW who first bought their engines from Hawker Siddeley in Brussels, became the direct official Belgian distributor for Dorman engines.

When the Stafford factory was finally bought by Perkins, EVW became the OEM Partner for Perkins Diesel and Gas engines and thus enjoys a preferred status characterized by valuable support and feedback both ways between Perkins and EVW.

That the company has always aimed at expansion shows from its constant growth at all levels. The first worker was the stepstone to a team of 45 now.

In the nineteen seventies the market of inland navigation in Belgium no longer allowed the company to bloom and EVW conquered the industrial gen-set market in Belgium. Generating sets, construction site generators, pump sets and fire diesels easily found a customer base and the first emergency stand-by gen-sets were installed. Many Belgian hospitals came to rely on EVW for their emergency power back-up (and still do today when these hospitals are renewing or expanding their technical installations). This would become the beginning of a long and impressive reference list.

Soon Belgium became too small. EVW’s products would be shipped to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, the Congo or Cameroon.
That the passion for engines is in EVW’s genes was proven by Jean-Pierre Van Wingen, who joined E. Van Wingen NV in 1986 after graduating from university and helped the company grow with great fervour. Emergency diesel generators turned into project business and new applications were developed in an engineering environment.
EVW grew into a leading manufacturer of power solutions with diesel and gas engines.

This growth was no longer compatible with the confined space of the premises in Gent, which is why in 1989 EVW moved to Evergem. In a brand new property on a newly developed industrial estate all the conditions were available to deliver high quality product and gain customer confidence : space and equipment, a dedicated team and the quest for excellence. Engineering was given enough room to develop into a fullyfledged department, one of the company’s strongholds today.