Cowley plant

Plant Oxford located in Cowley, southeast Oxford, England, is owned by BMW (UK) Manufacturing Limited (a subsidiary of BMW), and is the central assembly facility for the Mini range of cars. The plant forms the Mini production triangle along with Plant Hams Hall where engines are manufactured and Plant Swindon where body pressings and sub-assemblies are built.

The original Morris Motors site at Cowley had three manufacturing plants, separated by the eastern Oxford Ring Road and B480 road. The present site of Plant Oxford was the car body manufacturing business of the Pressed Steel Company, later known as Pressed Steel Fisher, which was founded 1926. The car south and north assembly plants originally Morris Motors plants, later part of Austin Rover Group and lastly as the Rover Group. The whole site was reorganized in the 1990s and now only the original Pressed Steel Company portion of the factory still remains.

In 1912, William Morris bought the former Oxford Military College in Cowley. Moving his company into the new site, from 1914 onwards Morris pioneered Henry Ford-style mass production in the UK, by building what became affectionately known as "the old tin shed." To facilitate more efficient production, the Great Western Railway opened Morris Cowley railway station to serve the thousands of workers commuting to the factory. In 1933, they built a railway goods yard beside the Wycombe 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 to High Wycombe has long been lifted.

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