Solihull plant

Solihull plant is a car manufacturing factory in Lode Lane, Lode Heath, Solihull, UK, owned by Jaguar Land Rover. The plant sits on a site and employs over 9,000 people in manufacturing. Originally two farms, Wharhall and Fordrove, were purchased in 1936 by the British Government on which to build a shadow factory in preparation for any potential war with Nazi Germany. Construction was started almost immediately, with the factory complete as a shell and placed in mothballs in late 1938. At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the factory was allocated to the Coventry-based Rover Company, who were assigned the task to build Bristol Hercules engines. Named No.2 Solihull, after starting fitting out initial production was undertaken in Acocks Green, with machined parts supplied from Drakelow. Rover took possession of the fitted-out factory in January 1940, and produced the first Rover-built Hercules engine in October 1940. The factory became a guarded and fortified location, and air raid shelters are still in the grounds of the plant. The oldest part of the Rover factory is the present day South Works, with its late 1930s art deco facade still with wartime camouflage. The engines were to be used in either planes or tanks, specifically Bristol Beaufighters and Handley Page Halifaxes, but mainly Short Stirlings. Locally, the majority of engines were shipped to the Austin Motors Elmdon factory at Cofton Hackett, part of the Longbridge plant, which produced the Stirling. In 2010 as part of the Land Rover Legacy Project, the Heritage Motor Centre sponsored a project to research and note the history of the factory. Rover's main Coventry car factory had been extensively damaged during the Nazi bombing of Coventry. Rover had negotiated an option to use the Solihull plant if their own was not viable to use at the war's end and in 1945 the Rover Company officially relocated from Coventry to the Lode Lane plant. As in the tradition of Rover previous main factories dating back to the original Starley and Sutton Rover Bicycle plant from Victorian times, the Solihull plant was named The Meteor Works.