Britain once built cars on a scale that is hard to picture now. Whole towns grew up around factory gates, and millions of family cars rolled out of plants in the Midlands, Oxford and Scotland. Many of those sites have since vanished under shops, homes and business parks. Here is a tour of some of the most famous, and what you would find there today.

Longbridge, Birmingham

The rise

Herbert Austin set up shop in a disused printing works at Longbridge in 1905. By the 1920s the factory was turning out the Austin Seven, a tiny, cheap car that put a huge number of British families on the road for the first time.

Longbridge later became one of the biggest car plants in the world. It built the original Mini from 1959, along with the Metro, Maestro and a long list of Austin and Rover models. At its peak, tens of thousands of people worked there, and the site had its own railway sidings, test track and even tunnels.

The fall

The end came suddenly. MG Rover collapsed in April 2005, and around 6,000 workers lost their jobs almost overnight. The site was later bought by Chinese firm Nanjing Automobile, and a small amount of MG assembly carried on for a few years before stopping altogether in 2016.

Longbridge today

Most of the old works has been flattened and rebuilt. There is now a new town centre with shops, including a large Marks and Spencer, a college campus, new housing and a park. A small MG presence remained for a while, but anyone expecting giant factory sheds would struggle to recognise the place.

Cowley, Oxford

Morris country

William Morris started building cars in Oxford in 1913, and his factory at Cowley grew into a giant. It produced the Morris Oxford, the much-loved Morris Minor and the Mini, which was built there as well as at Longbridge. Across the road, the Pressed Steel company made car bodies, and the two sites together employed huge numbers of local people.

What changed

Cowley is a slightly different story, because cars are still made there. Under BMW ownership, the old Pressed Steel side became Plant Oxford, which builds the modern MINI. But the original Morris works to the south was demolished in the 1990s.

Cowley today

The land where Morris cars were once put together is now largely the Oxford Business Park, full of offices and car parks. It is a strange twist that commuters now park their cars on the very spot where so many cars were first born.

Linwood, Renfrewshire

A Scottish experiment

Linwood, near Paisley, was meant to bring car making to Scotland. The Rootes Group opened the factory in 1963 to build the Hillman Imp, a clever little rear-engined car with an aluminium engine that had racing roots. It was a bold idea, and hopes were sky high.

Troubled years

The Imp suffered from early reliability problems and never sold as well as hoped. Parts had to be shipped back and forth to England, which added cost. Rootes was taken over by Chrysler, then Peugeot's Talbot brand, and the plant closed in 1981 with the loss of thousands of jobs. It was a heavy blow for the area.

Linwood today

Much of the site is now home to the Phoenix Retail Park, a name that says a lot about local hopes for a fresh start. There are shops, restaurants and new homes where the Imp production line once stood.

A few more lost names

- Canley, Coventry - home of Standard and Triumph, which built the Herald and Spitfire. Car production stopped around 1980 and much of the land is now housing.

- Browns Lane, Coventry - where Jaguar built legends like the XK120 and Mark 2. Jaguar left in 2005 and the site was redeveloped with homes.

- Ryton, Coventry - the last big Peugeot plant in the UK, building the 206 until it closed in 2006. Today it is covered in large warehouses.

Where did all the cars go?

The factories may be gone, but plenty of their cars live on in garages, club car parks and classic shows. Many more reached the end of the road long ago and were recycled into new steel. If you have an old Rover, Austin or Talbot that is finally beyond saving, you can check what it is worth with our scrap car prices guide or book free scrap car collection .

Next time you pop to the shops at Longbridge or Linwood, spare a thought for the workers who once built Britain's cars on that very spot.