How Mini's Cowley factory came into existence

“We wanted to prove the kit,” he says. “We built the first cars on the run. The normal shop-floor build [for a new model] is three years. We had nine months. There was only one body-in-white build phase before the start of production instead of three or four. The first Mini made was carried down the line, because the skillet lines [the body conveyors] were not driven.” Fisher adds that “there was a bouquet of roses on the bonnet” of that car in December 2000. It wasn’t quite the first R50-generation Mini, Longbridge having built a few pre-series cars, but it was a very significant one.

The factory was clearly teeming with activity. “There were a lot of BMW staff. There were four teams: the Mini project team kept their jobs,” says Jason Field, a senior IT specialist. “Cowley was paired with BMW’s Regensburg plant and there was a charter flight there to train from Monday to Friday.” The person tasked with overseeing the project is now boss of the Volkswagen Group. "Herbert Diess was a turnaround manager,” says Fisher. “He was nice to the workforce but hard to work for.” Field jokes: “Sleep and food were for wimps. They were long days.”

The effort was worth it, though, the buzz building around the car a novelty for a Cowley staff unused to having a big hit on their hands. “After the press event, we kept a lot of early cars,” says Dom Nolan, now a manager in materials supply. “We used them at the weekend and they would be swarmed.”

Yet some had doubts. “With the Rover 75, we believed we had built a really good car and it didn’t sell. This could be a repeat,” says Brook.

It wasn’t. “As orders started coming back, there were more shifts,” says John Cowan, ex-Rover and now on the electric Mini production integration team. “The weekend shift came on and it was seven days a week.”

Not just building cars but “keeping the kit going”, says Fisher. “It was not designed for here. It was almost thrown together. It was a real challenge. The line went up, down and around,” he says of the snake-like path it took. “The start of production was in April, as planned, but there weren’t masses built,” says Fisher. The Mini was launched to the public on 7 July 2001. “It was one launch date we couldn’t miss,” says Cowan.

Despite growing demand, Brook says: “There was still talk two years later that the plant might shut.” But as production grew, worries faded. “In 2001, it was less than 50,000 cars,” says Fisher, “but by 2005, it was over 200,000.” A year later, Fisher and his colleagues were finding ways to extend the production line within the old Rover buildings. “It was pretty innovative,” he says of solutions that made plentiful use of roof space. Ingenuity of the kind that made the original Mini famous is clearly flourishing at the factory that BMW calls ‘The Home of the Mini’, its next targets the launch of the Mini Electric and surviving Brexit.