100 years, not out for the Morris factory....As BMW celebrated 100 years of production at the site of the Morris factory, the star of the show was an ex-employee
This distinguished individual is Eric Lord, who started work at the Morris plant at Cowley in 1940, only retiring in 1979. He started out organising production and ended up as the Works Manager in 1960s (his "favourite job") trying to keep the production line going despite the presence of what he described as ‘a lot of people in the plant trying their best to shut it down.’
Despite the appearance of the Secretary of State for Transport and senior management from BMW, Mr Lord was surely the guest of honour at Thursday’s anniversary celebrations of 100 years of production at the old Morris works. Thursday 28th March was also Mr Lord’s 93rd birthday.
The audience at the event - which saw the opening of a new exhibition covering the history of the Cowley plant and a gathering of some of the cars made there - was riveted by Mr Lord’s short stint on stage. He talked about arriving to work on building Tiger Moth biplane trainer aircraft, a production line which he said was the first moving aeroplane production line in the world. Organising car production lines that were based on manual labour was also a problem. “We had so many men on the line carry out tasks, they would be falling over other”.
He then talked about his memories of Alex Issigonis, the legend behind the Morris Minor, Mini and 1100/1300 series. He explained that “you had to know how to handle” the mercurial engineer. “If you told him you had a problem, he would tell it wasn’t his problem and to ‘sort it out yourself’. However, if you asked for his help with a problem, he would always help you.” Lord also said that the Issigonis was very keen on playing dice during the lunch breaks. “We had to wolf down our lunch so we could join in his games”.
I managed to catch Eric Lord outside while we were waiting for a flypast by a Tiger Moth. I sidled up to him in that rather sloppy journalistic way and said “excuse me sir, could I ask a question”. Lord stood as upright as he could, offered a firm handshake and introduced himself with a brisk formality that demands you do the same.
I asked him about the huge number of combat aircraft repairs carried out at Cowley during WW2. Highly amusingly, in a loud stage whisper, Lord suggested that we “probably shouldn’t talk about that time” before doing just that. He told me that damaged aeroplanes would fly into the grass strip by the factory and would be “patched up” if they were full of holes. “Quite often, the same pilot would fly the plane out as soon as we had patched it up.’
He also told me that they thought wartime Cowley had been so well-disguised, it couldn’t be bombed. “After the war I saw some [reconnaissance] photos taken by the Germans and they had a red line right around the edge of the factory. They knew exactly where we were.”
It’s pretty hard to image a career that spanned patching up Spitfires and Hurricanes, and went through the introduction of Minor, Mini endless strikes, two major mergers, financial collapse and then nationalisation. But, somehow, the lines at Cowley never quite stopped permanently.
BMW presented Mr Lord and his wife with a birthday cake in the shape of a Minor. I calculated that there was 73 years between Mr Lord starting work at Cowley and the start of the career of the young, first year, female Mini apprentice who presented the cake.
But forget the cars and the history. Briefly meeting Mr and Mrs Lord was a major highlight. If I needed any confirmation the wartime generation remains an example of elegance, modesty and civility, Mr Lord was it. Indeed, while I was talking to him, Mr Lord had a mild coughing fit. When the Frank Bachmann, boss of the Mini plant, asked Mr Lord if would like some water, he replied that ‘he needed a pint’. After four decades of keeping the production lines running, it’s the least he deserved.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/blogs/anything ... is-factory
Cowley Centenary celebration
Key facts
"602,817 Classic Minis were produced at Oxford in 10 years of production."
"Three Issigonis designed cars achieved sales of over 1,000,000, Morris Minor, Mini and Austin 11/1300"
"Only three colours were available for the first three years of Oxford built Mini in 1959 – Clipper Blue, Cherry Red and Old English White."
"The two millionth new MINI was driven off the Oxford production line by Prime Minister David Cameron in August 2011."
"1.7 million new MINIs have been exported since its launch in 2001 to 107 different countries from Chile to China."
"Over 2,250,000 MINIs built so far."
Many more key facts are listed on AROnline:
http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/events/ ... lebration/