Plant Oxford

Approached in 1935 by the Air Ministry about the factory's ability to change to aircraft industry production, additional capacity was built into the factory through the shadow factory plan from 1937. During World War II the factory produced the de Havilland Tiger Moth training aeroplane. Also developed on site was the No 1 Metal and Produce Recovery Depot run by the Civilian Repair Organisation, to handle crashed or damaged aircraft, and even the processing of wreckage from enemy Luftwaffe aircraft. Artist Paul Nash was inspired to paint Totes Meer based on sketches he made of the recovery depot.

South-east facing side of Plant Oxford on Roman Way

For a detailed history on the post-war management of the factory, refer to the articles on British Motor Corporation, British Leyland, and Rover 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:

• 1952, Morris Motors) merges with the Austin Motor Company to form the British Motor Corporation (BMC)
• 1966 BMC acquires both Pressed Steel and Jaguar to create British Motor Holdings (BMH)
• 1968 BMH merges with Leyland Motors to become British Leyland (BL), "Austin-Morris" becomes the name for the mass-market car manufacturing division of BL.
• 1982 After much restructuring following its bankruptcy and nationalisation in 1975, BL renames its mass market car manufacturing subsidiary Austin Rover. Morris Ital production moves to Longbridge, marking the end of Morris badged cars at Cowley. Rover SD1 production moves to Cowley from Solihull; the plant would now make all Rover executive cars from that point on.
• 1986 BL is renamed the Rover Group, the Austin Rover brand is later dropped and only the Land Rover, Rover and MG brands survive.
• 1988 The Rover Group is sold to British Aerospace, with Honda maintaining a 20% stake in the business.
• 1994 British Aerospace sells Rover to BMW
• 2000 The Rover Group (divesting the Solihull and Longbridge plants), but retains the Cowley plant for MINI production and renames it Plant Oxford.

By the early 1970s, over 20,000 people worked in Cowley at the vast British Leyland and Pressed Steel Fisher plants. After re-organisation, PSF became part of the reorganised Austin Rover, while parts Unipart 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 the Austin Maxi ended in 1981 to make way for the Honda-based Triumph Acclaim, whilst production of the Princess range was axed in 1981 to allow the arrival of production of the Rover SD1 following the closure of the car production lines at Solihull, which was retained solely for the production of Land 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-built Morris 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 the Austin Maestro and Montego, 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-built Rover 200 and 400 series models.[2]

In 1992, Rover sold the entire site to property group Arlington Securities, itself later sold to the Australian property company Macquarie Goodman, now the Goodman Group and most of the old site was demolished.[3]

Owner of Rover Group, British Aerospace, agreed a partnership with Honda, with Honda taking a 20% stake in the company, in return for joint-development of the new Rover 600 and 800, both produced at Cowley. The 800 Series had been launched in mid 1986 and facelifted at the start of 1992;[4] 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.[5]

On 31 January 1994, BAe announced sale of its 80% majority share of Rover Group to BMW.[6] 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.[6] BMW invested heavily in Rover, and particularly the Cowley plant, which became the production centre for the new Rover 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 2016 Plant Oxford produced 210,973 Minis, which represented an increase of nearly 5% over the previous year's total of 201,207.[13]

Production volumes of all Mini models produced at Plant Oxford.

Staff numbers shown here include "temporary" staff.

These figures exclude production numbers of the Mini Countryman, which was manufactured in Austria. Since 2014 Mini "hatch" and "convertible" models have also been assembled, under contract, by VDL Nedcar in the Netherlands,[14] joined, at the end of 2016, by the Countryman model, its production now transferred from Austria in anticipation of the launch of a "plug-in hybrid" version.[15]