The Pressed Steel Company (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. Map sources for Cowley at grid reference SP5504 Cowley in Oxfordshire is a residential and industrial area within the city of Oxford, originating with the former villages of Cowley, Temple Cowley and Cowley St John (Also occasionally referred to as Church Cowley). The Cowley area underwent massive transformation from 1912... William Richard Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield (10 October 1877 - 22 August 1963) was the founder of the Morris Motor Company and a philanthropist. ... The Budd Company (now ThyssenKrupp Budd) is a metal fabricator and major supplier of body components to the automobile industry. ...

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's 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 By 1935 Budd had withdrawn and the company was fully independent, and also producing car bodies for competitors of MMC.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. Morris Motor logo, from a UK Royal Mail van 1927 Morris Cowley 1928 Morris Minor Saloon 1946 Morris Ten Series M 1953 Morris Minor Series 2 1971 Morris 1000 Traveller The Morris Motor Company was a former British car manufacturing company. ... The Rootes Group is a now-defunct British automobile manufacturer. ... 1927 Standard Nine Selby Tourer 1933 Standard Ten. ... Swindon is a large town in the South West of England. ... ĺFor other uses of the word see: Linwood (disambiguation) Linwood, a small town in Renfrewshire, Scotland, 14 miles south-west of Glasgow, which saw an explosion in its population during the middle of the 20th century due to the mass exodus of people from the Glasgow slums. ... The Hillman Imp was a compact, rear-engined saloon (US: sedan) automobile manufactured by the Rootes Group (later Chrysler Europe) from 1963 to 1976. ...

In 1966 PSC came together with Jaguar Cars and the British Motor Corporation (BMC) to form British Motor Holdings (BMH). In 1968 BMH merged with the Leyland Motor Corporation to form the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC). By this time PSC had become the world's largest independent car body and car body tool manufacturer, and supplied bodies and tools not only for the British motor industry but for Volvo, Alfa Romeo and Hindustan Motors also. Jaguar Cars is a British automobile manufacturer. ... BMC rosette logo old BMC share A preserved BMC ambulance. ... The British Motor Corporation (BMC) was a car company, formed by the merger of the Austin and Morris companies in 1952. ... Leyland Motors was a British vehicle manufacturer of lorries and buses. ... British Leyland corporate logo old BLMC share The British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC), was a vehicle manufacturing company formed in the United Kingdom in 1968. ... AB Volvo (or Aktiebolaget Volvo) is a world-leading Swedish manufacturer of commercial vehicles, buses and construction equipment, drive systems for marine and industrial applications, aerospace components and services. ... Alfa Romeo is an Italian automobile manufacturing company, founded as Darracq Italiana by Cavaliere Ugo Stella, an aristocrat from Milan in partnership with the French automobile firm of Alexandre Darracq. ... Hindustan Motors is the automobile manufacturer of India. ...

Under BLMC the business of the old BMC body making subsidiary Fisher and Ludlow was merged with that of PSC to form the Pressed Steel Fisher division.

Railway industry interests

A factory in Linwood was acquired by PSC in 1947 where they manufactured railway rolling stock.

Aircraft industry interests

In 1960 PSC formed British Executive and General Aviation Limited (BEAGLE) for the manufacture of aircraft with facilities at Shoreham-by-Sea and Rearsby airfields. Beagle Pup, England, 2003. ... Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, England, is bordered on the north by the South Downs, on the west by the Adur valley and on the south by the River Adur and Shoreham Beach. ... Rearsby is a village and civil parish in the Charnwood district of Leicestershire, England. ...

References

• (1966). "The British Motor Corporation Ltd. and the Pressed Steel Company Ltd. A report on the merger". Competition Commission (UK). Retrieved on 2006-06-06.
• Bardsley, Gillian. Issigonis: The Official Biography. Icon Books. ISBN 1840467789.