BMW marks 100 years of car production at Cowley.
BMW’s Cowley plant in Oxford, home of the original Mini, is gearing up to celebrate 100 years of car-making this week.
tinyurl.com/d3gc4dq - The Telegraph
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-21948484
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Not strictly true.
The original factory was on the other side of the road to the current plant.
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The Cowley car plant that 'is' 100 years old was mostly demolished in 1994. BMW then redeveloped the entire area in 2000 with the few remaining original remnants of Cowley becoming part of the Oxford Business Park.
Another case of marketing puffery v. truth with puffery winning out?
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My late father in law worked at Cowley during and around the war years... repairing spitfires and others. He delighted in watching the spitfire test pilot Alex Henshaw (chief test pilot at Castle Bromwich) put some through their paces over the airfield. Alex Henshaw was probably the greatest spitfire pilot. He flew the aircraft in the first few minutes of this Ministry of Information film about ferry pilots.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCmzYccyBYM
Apparently he was known for hanger skimming stunts and flying low while inverted. Once he was asked to put on a show for the Birmingham mayor and flew inverted along the street towards City Hall and below the height of its roof.
He was born in Peterborough, tested over 2,600 spitfires, flew 300 lancasters (including being the only man to barrel roll one), baled out once, crashed many times and age 93 he took the controls of a two seater spitfire over Southampton.
He died at 94 after a relaxed retirement in Newmarket.
Top life.
His book "Sigh for a merlin" is a great read.
But I digress...
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I went on a guided tour of the MINI factory a couple of months ago, and I was highly impressed at the level of sophistication (and the fact that the workforce seemed quite jovial).
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I am from Oxford, and many school-friends dads worked there throughout my childhood, as did a few members of my family. Rover were very active with local schools in the 80's, offering factory tours and apprenticeships with very attractive packages. A few schoolmates took up the latter, learning trades that they have gone on to build good careers with. I saw Rover 800s being built the year they were launched, and followed the whole process from the sheet metal presses to the finished cars coming off the line. Everything except the paint shop of course, due to the contamination risk. Then we got a presentation, and got to play with a couple of finished cars in the showroom area. It remains a very memorable day of my childhood. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
My dad did a stint as a welder in the 70's, but left because he could never earn any real money due to being called out on strike every couple of weeks. Some of the stories he tells are remarkable - think "On The Buses" levels of skiving, and to say the approach to work was lackadaisical would be a massive understatement. The shoddy quality of the crap they built in that period isn't a surprise to me. What is truly amazing is that anything they produced worked at all.
My uncle worked there his entire life as an electrician, and retired in the late 90's. He enjoyed it until BMW took over, which if you talk to him about it, basically means the new German overlords realised that a lot of people were being paid good salaries to sit around and drink tea for huge chunks of their working day, and they put a stop to it. :-)
"The factory" as it is known locally, is a fraction of its former size, and very little remains of the original building. As was said above, much of it is now the Oxford Business Park.
Last edited by: DP on Thu 28 Mar 13 at 09:20
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Oxford's Cowley car plant turns 100-years-old - swiss tony
