The Lighthouse in Oxford the railway station at Frideswide Square gradually eroded away much of the canal trade. In 1913 William Morris (later Lord Nuffield), without licence, started his own bus service to compete with the city's cumbersome tram network. In 1951, Lord Nuffield further forced change when he acquired the Oxford Canal Basin and proceeded to fill it. Nuffield College and Worcester Street car park now stand where once lay the Basin. This was the death knell of the canal system as a competitive mode of transport in Oxford as technology replaced human labour. An apt example can be found in the reconstruction
Plant Oxford production centre for the new Rover 75 in late 1998. In 2000, BMW broke up the Rover Group, selling MG Rover and its products to the Phoenix consortium for the nominal sum of £10, which included the Longbridge plant. BMW agreed to redevelop the entire Cowley plant site with the Goodman Group, demolishing much of the factory, to create a new factory called Plant Oxford. The residual parts of the former Morris Motors site were placed into a redevelopment project called the Oxford Business Park, which now houses offices of numerous companies including: European headquarters of Harley-Davidson Motorcycles; the global