An ignition and combustion model has been developed to predict the heat release rate in direct injection compression ignition engines employing very early injection timing. The model describes the chemical reactions, including low-temperature oxidation. The KIVA II computer code was modified with the present ignition and combustion model. The numerical results indicate that the model developed in this work reproduces major features of two-stage autoignition, as well as experimentally observed trends in NOx and unburned fuel emissions. The computational results show that fuel injection timing significantly influences NOx emissions. Results also indicate that fuel droplets that enter the squish region possibly become unburned fuel emissions. Some graphical results demonstrate the relationships among the in-cylinder fuel spray distributions, fuel-air equivalence ratio, temperature, and mass fractions of NO and unburned fuel.