Pressed Steel Company

At the very end of 1935 Budd agreed to sell their controlling interest to British interests and then Pressed Steel was fully independent[11] having from mid-1930 also produced car bodies for Morris's competitors.[12][note 2]

The degree of completion of Pressed Steel's finished product varied widely. In some cases unpainted stampings were shipped to the customer's plant for finishing and assembly. In other cases, customers were sent their bodies fully assembled, painted, trimmed and glazed.[9]

In 1944 W. A. Robotham saw that there would be limited postwar demand for Rolls-Royce or Bentley chassis with a body from a specialist coachbuilder, and negotiated with the company a contract for a general-purpose body to carry four people in comfort on their postwar chassis behind a Rolls-Royce or Bentley radiator. Though he stretched the demand to 2,000 per year, Pressed Steel were "nonplussed" by their small demand. The body was used for the Bentley Mark VI and Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn. They were assembled at Roll-Royce's Crewe works previously used for the Merlin aero engine, on a new body production line.[13]

MG Magnette ZA

Standard Steel Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn with Pressed Steel pressings 1953

When compared with USA and France the British automotive industry then had little vertical integration. Britain's "Big Five"[note 3] looked to their body suppliers. In the spring of 1953 Briggs Motor Bodies, American like Budd, had the bulk of its British operation swallowed by Ford. The following autumn The British Motor Corporation acquired Fisher & Ludlow. Fisher & Ludlow supplied Standard-Triumph who were then obliged to take control of the relatively small Mulliners but that took a few more years to develop and Mulliners was to close at the end of 1960. Pressed Steel stood alone as the only remaining independent supplier of mass-produced car bodies in Britain.[9]

In December 1953 Pressed Steel Company Limited was able to advertise: "The largest press shops in Europe with over 350 power presses working with pressures up to 1000 tons . . . a factory area at Cowley alone more than half the size of Hyde Park . . . Here, indeed, with its 12,000 and more workers, is one of Britain's greatest industrial enterprises."

Factories: Cowley, Oxford. Theale, Berkshire. Linwood, Scotland.
Head Office: Cowley
London Office: Sceptre House, 169 Regent Street W1.

Manufacturers of bodywork and pressings for many of the most famous names in the British motor-car industry, including Austin, Daimler, Hillman, Humber, Jaguar, Lanchester, Morris, Morris Commercial, MG, Riley, Rover, Singer, Wolseley.[note 4]

The largest body manufacturers in Britain and pioneers in Britain of pressed steel bodywork and unitary construction in quantity.

Manufacturer of Prestcold refrigerators, steel railway wagons, agricultural implements and pressings of all types.[14]

Names to which pressings were supplied not included in the above list include Rolls-Royce and Bentley, Alfa Romeo, Volvo, Vauxhall.

The Swindon pressing plant in 1967

In 1956 they 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.[9] By the end of the 20th century the Linwood site had been completely cleared. It is now partly occupied by a cinema complex.

Pressed Steel was a major manufacturer of press tooling for Morris, Hillman, Rover and Rolls-Royce and car companies across the world including Vauxhall, Alfa Romeo etc.[9]

The R&D function, which was set up at the Cowley site in the early 1960s, and later transferred to their development site at Gaydon [1980], was a centre of excellence for the industry with many new processes including the development of electrophoretic painting (electrocoat), full mould casting, robotic welding and assembly, robotic adhesive and sealant application and robotic painting amongst many other firsts in the industry. In the late 1960s, and the early 1970s, the R&D function pioneered the use of Finite Element Analysis for the body structure, and developed computerised crash simulation techniques for the complete vehicle, the occupants and the pedestrian. Between 1973 & 1980 the R & D function also developed plastic fuel tanks that proved superior to the only other current ones of the time produced by Volkswagen.

When BMW acquired Rover Group in 1994 it became owner of the Swindon pressing plant. Although BMW disposed of much of Rover Group's assets in 2000, they retained the Swindon pressings plant and set up a subsidiary, Swindon Pressings Limited (SPL), there in 2000. SPL now provides most of the body panels and body sub-assemblies for the Mini models produced at Plant Oxford in Cowley, at what was the Pressed Steel site.[23]

Linwood was a pressing site for Chrysler, pushed for and subsidized by the British Government

Under the Prestcold name Pressed Steel supplied refrigerators for the home, industrial cold rooms and marine installations. The Domestic Refrigeration Factory (DRF)—it was publicly acknowledged the product of the first four years was not reliable[4]—started in 1933 and was located within the Cowley site for many years before transferring to Swansea in a government sponsored regeneration scheme, an ill-fated venture with Rolls washing machines. As a supplier to entrepreneur John Bloom's company when Rolls Razor went into liquidation in July 1964 Pressed Steel was owed $1,200,000.[24] So ended Prestcold domestic appliances.

Industrial refrigeration supplied on a large scale to supermarkets and food retailing groups[9] was to continue for many years operating out of the Theale site nr. Reading.

Class 117 Pressed Steel suburban unit no. 51360

Former associate Budd Corporation built passenger rolling stock. An existing engineering factory in Linwood, Scotland, was acquired by Pressed Steel in 1947 where they manufactured railway rolling stock. A peak of production was reached in the late 1950s – early 1960s. The types of rolling stock produced were of standard British Railways design, and included: standard carriages, British Rail Class 117 Diesel Multiple Units, British Rail Class 303 "Blue Train" Electric Multiple Units, and specialist vehicles like restaurant cars. Pressed Steel received few orders after the completion of the changeover to diesel trains and modern carriages.[9]

Beagle Airedale 1961

British Executive and General Aviation Limited. In 1960 Pressed Steel was persuaded by Sir Peter Masefield to invest in light aircraft through the formation of its Beagle Aircraft division. Beagle was sold to the government in December 1966. This venture lost Pressed Steel about £3M.[25]

Beagle's facilities at Shoreham-by-Sea were purchased with their take-over of Miles Aircraft and those at Rearsby with Auster.

• "The British Motor Corporation Ltd. and the Pressed Steel Company Ltd. A report on the merger". Competition Commission (UK). 1966. Archived from the original on 10 September 2006. Retrieved 6 June 2006. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Bardsley, Gillian (2006). Issigonis: The Official Biography. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-778-9.