Pressed Metal Corporation

Pressed Metal Corporation was established in the late 1930s as a joint venture between Larke Hoskins, the Austin agents for New South Wales, and its affiliate Larke, Neave & Carter, the state's Chrysler distributor, to build motor bodies on a 22-acre site in the Sydney suburb of Enfield. Its early trade was Austin cars and commercial vehicles; when BMC Australia was formed in 1954 much of the Austin work moved to Melbourne, and Enfield diversified. By 1956 the plant was turning out Leyland bus chassis, Morris commercials, Austin A40, A50 and A55 utilities to PMC's own body designs — and Land Rovers. Subcontract assembly over the following years took in the Austin-Healey Sprite, the Austin Gipsy, MG models (about 2,500 MGAs between 1957 and 1962) and the Morris J2, with a brief eighteen-month Datsun Bluebird 1300 agreement from 1966.

The Rover Company contracted PMC — already bodying Leyland and AEC buses — to assemble Land Rovers at Enfield from about 1956, the same year Rover Australia Pty Ltd was formed; Rover Australia held a part interest in PMC. Australian-market and Australian Army Land Rovers were accordingly built up in Sydney from Completely Knocked Down kits rather than imported complete. The Army's 'more-or-less civilian' Series 2 109s of around 1960, the Series 2A ¾-ton specialty conversions of 1963-66 and the definitive Series 2A ¾-ton General Service trucks of 1966-67 all came through Enfield, and the Registry of Ex-Military Land Rovers records both four- and six-cylinder 109s passing through PMC as late as 1971-72. Land Rover and Range Rover assembly continued at Enfield — latterly alongside the Leyland Mini and Moke, the Leyland National and Mercedes-Benz bus chassis — into the mid-1980s.

Ownership changed with the British motor industry. Leyland Australia bought the company in 1968, and it later sat within the Australian Land Rover and Jaguar operation. A separate bus-body works, opened at Milperra and moved to Revesby in 1965, became one of Australia's biggest: between May 1967 and October 1990 it bodied 2,289 of the 2,603 buses delivered to the State Transit Authority. Bus bodying ceased in January 1991 and the site turned to refurbishment.

In July 1996 the bus business was sold, as part of JRA Limited's disposals, to the Clifford Corporation. Clifford's collapse took it down with it, and Pressed Metal Corporation was wound up in April 1999. The precise founding date is the one thing that cannot be pinned down: published accounts say only 'the late 1930s', while Wikidata records 1930 — hence this entry's draft status.