Willowvale Motor Industries (WMI) was established in 1961 when Ford Motor Corporation of Canada imported a complete assembly plant to assemble Ford motor vehicles for  the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) bought the company in 1967 for contractual assembly.

Due to changes in government policy, the company was restructured into an automotive group called Motec Holdings under a joint venture partnership between Industrial Development Corporation of Zimbabwe (IDCZ), Mazda Corporation of Japan and Itochu Corporation (C Itoh & Co then) of Japan. This agreement was signed in 1989 and expired in 2014. WMMI, a subsidiary of Motec Holdings (as it was then), started to concentrate on assembling the Mazda Brand, achieving significant gains in productivity. Over the years the partnership contributed to the enhancement of production capacity, quality and skills development to enable the company to produce world class vehicles for Zimbabwe and the region.

In year 2015, the company adopted a new strategy, reverting to multi-franchising and contractual assembly with various partners,  hence the change of name back to Willowvale Motor Industries (WMI) and the introduction of new brands like BAIC and Mahindra. The factory currently operates on contract assembly basis and from 2017 to 2021 has assembled BAIC brand picks-ups from SKD kits..