Plant Oxford located inCowley, southeastOxford,England, is aBMW car assembly facility whereMini cars are built. The plant forms the Mini production triangle along withPlant Hams Hall where engines are manufactured andPlant Swindon where body pressings and sub-assemblies are built.
The originalMorris Motors site at Cowley had three manufacturing plants, separated by the easternOxford Ring Road and B480 road. The present site of Plant Oxford was the car body manufacturing business of thePressed Steel Company, later known as Pressed Steel Fisher, which was founded in 1926. The north and south car assembly plants were originally Morris Motors plants, later part ofBritish Leyland and latterly theRover Group. The whole site was reorganised in the 1990s and now only the original Pressed Steel portion of the site remains.[1]
In 1912,William Morris bought the formerOxford Military College in Cowley.[citation needed] Moving his company into the new site, from 1914 onwards Morris pioneeredHenry Ford-stylemass production in the UK, by building what became affectionately known as "the old tin shed." In 1925, Morris opened his own printing division, Morris Oxford Press, laterNuffield Press, taking up some of the original military college buildings.[2]
To facilitate more efficient production, theGreat Western Railway openedMorris Cowley railway station to serve the thousands of workers commuting to the factory. In 1933, they built arailwaygoods yard beside theWycombe Railway to bring supplies into the factory, and take completed vehicles away. This railway yard still exists today and serves the current vehicle-manufacturing plant, though the railway toHigh Wycombe has long been lifted.
As Cowley expanded into a huge industrial centre, it attracted workers during theGreat Depression looking for work. This resulted in the need for new housing, including from the 1920sFlorence Park, built mainly by privatelandlords. Like many contemporary industrialists of the time, Morris wanted to provide for the whole life of its workers, and so developed the Morris Motors Athletic & Social Club on Crescent Road, which still exists today.
Approached in 1935 by theAir Ministry about the factory's ability to change to aircraft industry production, additional capacity was built into the factory through theshadow factory plan from 1937. DuringWorld War II, the factory produced thede Havilland Tiger Moth training aeroplane. Also developed on site was the No 1 Metal and Produce Recovery Depot run by theCivilian Repair Organisation, to handle crashed or damaged aircraft, and even the processing of wreckage from enemyLuftwaffe aircraft. ArtistPaul Nash was inspired to paintTotes Meer based on sketches he made of the recovery depot.
For a detailed history on the post-war management of the factory, refer to the articles onBritish Motor Corporation,British Leyland, andRover Group
Despite successive company mergers and name changes, "Morris's" is still often used as the name of the car factory to this day. A brief timeline of the plant's history is as follows:
By the early 1970s, over 20,000 people worked in Cowley at the vast British Leyland andPressed Steel Fisher plants. After re-organisation, PSF became part of the reorganisedAustin Rover, while partsUnipart was floated off in a management buyout, but still has its global headquarters next to the Morris plant. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Cowley Assembly Plant (the former Morris Motors factory) faced a high level of industrial action, a problem which successive management teams struggled to resolve.
Much rationalisation took place at the plant in the early 1980s, as BL restructured its manufacturing operations in the light of the Ryder Report. Production of theAustin Maxi ended in 1981 to make way for the Honda-basedTriumph Acclaim, whilst production of thePrincess range was axed in 1981 to allow the arrival of production of theRover SD1 following the closure of the car production lines at Solihull, which was retained solely for the production ofLand Rover vehicles. Future large Rovers would therefore be built at Cowley until the BMW sell-off in 2000.
The Morris marque was abandoned in 1984, when production of the Longbridge-builtMorris Ital finished; it had been transferred there from Cowley in September 1982, two years after its launch. The transfer of the Ital from Cowley was to make way for theAustin Maestro andMontego, which were launched in March 1983 and April 1984 respectively, continued in production until December 1994, though production was gradually cut back after 1989 following the launch of the successful Longbridge-builtRover 200 and400 series models.[3]
In 1992,Rover sold the entire site to property group Arlington Securities, itself later sold to theAustralian property company Macquarie Goodman, now theGoodman Group and most of the old site was demolished.[4]
Owner of Rover Group,British Aerospace, agreed a partnership withHonda, with Honda taking a 20% stake in the company, in return for joint-development of the newRover 600 and800, both produced at Cowley. The 800 Series had been launched in mid 1986 and facelifted at the start of 1992;[5] a year before the launch of the 600 Series.
Despite 1989 seeing a then record of more than 2.3 million new cars being sold in the United Kingdom, falling demand for the 800 Series resulted in 1,800 job cuts at Cowley being announced in October of that year.[6]
On 31 January 1994, BAe announced sale of its 80% majority share of Rover Group toBMW.[7] On 21 February, Honda announced it was selling its 20% share of Rover Group, resulting in problems in Rover's supply chain which was highly reliant on Honda.[7] BMW invested heavily in Rover, and particularly the Cowley plant, which became the production centre for the newRover 75 in late 1998. However, when BMW broke up the Rover Group on its sale 18 months later, production of the Rover 75 was switched to Longbridge, while BMW retained the rights to build the new Mini and retained the Cowley plant to produce it at.
In 2000, BMW broke up the Rover Group, sellingMG Rover and its products to the Phoenix consortium for the nominal sum of £10, which included theLongbridge plant.
BMW agreed to redevelop the entire Cowley plant site with the Goodman Group, demolishing much of the factory, to create a new factory calledPlant Oxford. The residual parts of the former Morris Motors site were placed into a redevelopment project called the Oxford Business Park, which now houses offices of numerous companies including: European headquarters ofHarley-DavidsonMotorcycles; the global headquarters of international aid charityOxfam;Wiley-Blackwell;Royal Mail;HM Revenue and Customs; and a largeDavid Lloydfitness centre.
Plant Oxford now produces the newMini, built byBMW since May 2001.[11] It is the largest industrial employer in Oxfordshire.[citation needed] In February 2009, 850 jobs cuts at the site were announced, resulting in union bosses being pelted with food by angry agency staff who felt that the union had failed to do enough to try and save their jobs.[12] Shortly thereafter, the company was forced to hire more staff to meet production requirements due to an upswing in demand overseas.
Group tours of the plant are offered and should be booked in advance.[13]
In October 2015, a two-episode seriesBuilding Cars Live was filmed there to show how a car is built. It was presented byJames May,Kate Humble andAnt Anstead.
In 2016, Plant Oxford produced 210,973 Minis, which represented an increase of nearly 5% over the previous year's total of 201,207.[14]
Production volumes of all Mini models produced at Plant Oxford.
| 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Production volume | 191,475 | 216,301 | 213,670 | 235,018 | 237,700 | 186,674 | 200,119 | 189,492 | 174,366 | 160,000 | |
| Staff numbers | 3,448 | 3,795 | 4,471 | 5,253 | 4,922 | 6,108 | 4,930 |
Staff numbers shown here include "temporary" staff.
These figures exclude production numbers of theMini Countryman, which was manufactured in Austria. Since 2014 Mini "hatch" 3-door and "convertible" models have also been assembled, under contract, byVDL Nedcar inthe Netherlands,[15] joined, at the end of 2016, by theCountryman model, its production now transferred from Austria in anticipation of the launch of a "plug-in hybrid" version.[16]
| Current brands |
|
|---|---|
| Previous brands | |
| Divisions and subsidiaries | |
| Joint ventures | |
| Vehicles | |
| Technologies | |
| Motorsport | |
| Buildings | |
| Other | |
