Making Cars at Cowley: From Morris to Rover

In 1913 William Morris, one of the pioneers of the British motor industry, converted a derelict military college on the outskirts of Oxford into a modest workshop to manufacture motor vehicles. So began one of the extraordinary success stories of motoring history. By producing practical and affordable cars which sold all over the world, Morris widened the social scale of car ownership and thus helped to change the face of modern transport. This earned him a series of public honours, leading to his elevation to the peerage as Lord Nuffield in 1938. This book celebrates his remarkable achievement and the cars which made his reputation. It also records the uncertain fortunes of the company during the post-war period as it became subject to wider forces of merger and take-over, becoming part of the British Motor Corporation, then British Leyland and finally the present-day Rover Group. The authors have drawn on the superb collection of photographs preserved in the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust's archives to provide an account of this story. The photographs show the evolution of manufacturing methods which started with hand-building, developed into mass production, and culminated with the introduction of the robots of the early 1980s.