William Richard Morris was born in 1877, grew up in Oxford and was apprenticed to a local cycle dealer and repairer. At the age of 16 he set up his own bicycle workshop in a brick shed at 16, James Street Oxford. Oxford being a University town with an abundance of bicycles, his business prospered due to his hard work, drive and rapidly increasing business acumen.

Morris then opened a cycle shop at 48 High Street, which prospered similarly, and began manufacturing small numbers of cycles for sale. In 1901 he branched out into motorcycle manufacture and repair, establishing the Morris Motor Cycle, which was at first little more than a motorized pedal cycle.

In 1902 he opened what eventually became the first Morris Garage on Longwall Street, opposite the junction with Holywell Street. Initially the Garage began to service and repair cars, but Morris's experience with motor cycle manufacture made a venture to manufacture cars an obvious extension, and in 1912 he began car manufacture, from a factory in Cowley, Oxford. Inspired by the example of Ford in America, he pioneered production line assembly in Britain.

With a reputation for producing high-quality cars and a policy of cutting prices, Morris Motor Company continued to grow and increase its share of the British market. In 1924, Morris overtook Ford to become the UK's biggest car manufacturer, holding a 51% share of the home market. The company's strategy included vertical integration, buying up suppliers - for example, Hotchkiss in Coventry became the Morris Engines branch in 1923. In 1924 the head of the Morris sales agency in Oxford, Cecil Kimber, started building sporting versions of Morris cars, called MG ‘“ after the agency, Morris Garages. The MG factory was in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

The small car market was entered in 1928, with the Morris Minor, using an 847 cc engine from the Wolseley Motor Company, a company which had became part of Morris Motors the year before. The Minor was replaced at the 1934 London Motor Show by the Morris Eight, a direct response to the Ford Model Y and heavily based on it. In 1936, William Morris sold Morris Commercial Cars Limited, his commercial vehicle enterprise, to Morris Motors. In 1938 William Morris became Viscount Nuffield, and the same year he merged the Morris Motor Company (incorporating Wolseley) and MG with newly acquired Riley to form a new company, the Nuffield Organisation.

 In the summer of 1938 Nuffield agreed to construct a major new factory at Castle Bromwich to produce the  Supermarine Spitfire. At Cowley they produced Tiger Moth trainers. After the war, production restarted with the pre-war Eight and Ten designs, but in 1948, an iconic new model appeared, the Morris Minor, designed by Alec Issigonis (who would later design the Mini). The Ten was replaced by a new 1948 Morris Oxford, styled like a larger version of the Minor -  a later variant from 1956 became India's Hindustan Ambassador, which remains in production.

In 1952 the Nuffield Organisation merged with the Austin Motor Company to form the British Motor Corporation. further industrial rationalisation saw BMC part of British Leyland Motor Corporation in 1968; and in 1975, part of the nationalised British Leyland Limited. After privatisation, the company was bought by British Aersospace, then BMW. Following a management buy in, in 2000, the company went into liquidation in 2005.