Pressed Steel Company

The Pressed Steel Company Limited (PSC) was a British car body manufacturing company founded at Cowley near Oxford in 1926 as a joint venture between William Morris, the Budd Corporation and an American bank. Today at what was the company's Cowley plant, the BMW new MINI is assembled, this site is known as "Plant Oxford". At the company's Swindon plant, the BMW subsidiary Swindon Pressings Limited has been established. Swindon produces parts for the new MINI and is known as "Plant Swindon".

Motor industry

Morris had seen the potential of pressed steel car bodies being developed at Budd in the U.S. The new venture started up by supplying car bodies to Morris Morris Motor Company (MMC), with its plant being located alongside that of MMC. By 1935 Budd had withdrawn and the company was fully independent, and also producing car bodies for competitors of MMC. By the late 1950s the company was making bodies for most of the major car companies in the UK including Rolls-Royce, Rootes, and Standard-Triumph. In 1956 PSC opened a new plant in Swindon to provide extra capacity, and in 1961 they opened their Linwood, Scotland plant alongside the new Rootes Linwood plant to provide bodies for the new Hillman Imp being produced there.

The company also produced panels for Volvo and complete bodies for Rover and Ford.

Pressed Steel was a major manufacturer of press tooling for Morris, Hillman, Rover and Rolls Royce and car companies across the world including...
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