William Morris started out repairing and building bicycles in Oxford, moved on to motorcycles and a garage business, and in 1912 set up W.R.M. Motors to build a car of his own. The first Morris Oxford appeared in 1913, assembled largely from bought-in parts, an approach that let Morris build cars cheaply and in volume at his works in Cowley, on the edge of Oxford. The company was renamed Morris Motors in 1919.
Bold price cuts during the slump of the early 1920s made Morris Britain’s biggest car maker, and the “Bullnose” Oxford and Cowley became familiar sights on British roads. Morris bought suppliers and rivals along the way, including Wolseley in 1927 and Riley in 1938, and MG grew out of Morris Garages, his Oxford dealership.
After the Second World War came Alec Issigonis’s Morris Minor of 1948, the first British car to sell a million examples. In 1952 Morris merged with Austin to form the British Motor Corporation, and Issigonis’s Mini followed in 1959, sold as both the Morris Mini-Minor and the Austin Seven. BMC became part of British Leyland in 1968; the Marina of 1971 and the Ital of 1980 were the last Morris cars, and the name was retired in 1984.
