About 1959, PMC moved a few miles west of Milwaukee to Pewaukee. The 1959 Ford Ranchero and Country Sedan wagon and a 1959 Opel Rekord seem to have been the last promotionals offered by PMC. Since the Opel did not change much for 1960, it was carried over to the next year (Hover 2011). By 1960, however, Hubley gained contracts for plastic promos of the Ford station wagon, which it carried over through 1962, apparently pushing PMC out of the promotional business.
After 1959, PMC’s history gets fuzzy. PMC, or another caster using PMC’s dies, later made simplified retail toy versions of earlier models up to as late as about 1965. Available at dime stores like G. C. Murphys, the Ranchero, Beetle, Opel, 1958 Chevrolet Cameo pickup, and probably others, were offered in a more simple style in non-warping styrene (Scale Auto Magazine 2004). They were simplified from the promo versions, with no interiors or windows and wheels were solid black styrene with or without whitewalls. The earlier of these retail versions of the Ranchero were still molded in two-tone colors, but later, solid colors were used (turquoise green or red were two choices). These were offered as either unassembled kits or assembled models, sometimes poly-bagged (Scale Auto Magazine 2004).
It appears 1959 was a pivotal year for promotional model makers, and PMC in particular. Perhaps some of the company’s decline had to do with the expense of engineering the new non-warping styrene plastic mixed with the tooling required to make the ever more popular kits that other manufacturers took up. PMC’s kits were very simple and not as well known as those of AMT, SMP or Jo-Han. As a company, Jo-Han did well, but was always the lesser of the Big Three (being AMT, MPC and JoHan. Venerable maker SMP was absorbed by AMT, but PMC was several rungs down the promo ladder by 1960 and gradually weakened through the decade.
Another blow to PMC’s car production was Hubley’s contract for 1960 through 1962 Ford wagons and hardtops, a niche that PMC had in 1959. Adding insult to injury, Ford dropped its full-size Ranchero model and neither did PMC get the contract for the new Falcon-based pickup. Perhaps the company’s decision to exit production of promotional and car models was also due to a peripheral headquarters location in Milwaukee – away from close contact with Detroit’s design offices.
PMC, after establishing some unique niches for itself with GM and IH over a decade, diminished into retail toy markets for a few years, and then abandoned most car model production. Today known as PM Plastics the company is still headquartered in Pewaukee, Wisconsin and makes plastic trays, containers, exercise steps, ramps, and other products (though a neat pontoon plane is shown on the company website (PM Plastics website). The company’s CEO is Bill Ford (son of founder Ed) and family member Gerald Ford is president of Moraine Plastics Co. and Nitschke Mold & Manufacturing.