Vintage Tractor Engineer

This Ferguson tractor story comes straight from Harry Ferguson’s grandson, who tells of a 60Hp Ferguson tractor which never made it into full production.

This information came from Vintage Tractor Engineer’s farming neighbour. The neighbour was looking to buy some dairy cows and a whole herd was advertised on the Isle of White. It turned out that the seller of the cows was none other than the grandson of Harry Ferguson, who runs a Ferguson museum on the island as well as Harry Ferguson Farms LTD at Kings Manor, Freshwater.

VTE’s neighbour was told the story of a Ferguson tractor that never went into production.  Clearly the Massey Ferguson 35 was a successful tractor and Harry wanted to capitalise and improve on the machine by introducing a 60Hp version for the larger farms.  The story goes that 6 of these prototype tractors were manufactured and sent out onto farms.  This happened at the time after Ferguson had sold out to Massey Harris and all tractors were now been sold under the Massey Ferguson brand (2007 is 50 years of Massey Ferguson).  Harry was delighted with the new 60Hp version and expected the model to outsell all other competition and propell Massey Ferguson into a league above all the other tractor manufacturers.  At this time though, Harry was now only an employee of the Massey Ferguson Corporation and did not have the final say any more over tractor production decisions.  The company chiefs decided to shelve the 60Hp Ferguson designed tractor in favour of their own Massey Harris designed tractor.  The Massey Harris designed tractor was badged the Massey Ferguson 65 but the tractor was not received well and was not a great comercial success.  It can be seen that the design and styling of the Massey Ferguson 65 has an American feel to it and it clearly wasn’t the big brother of the Massey Ferguson 35.

Sadly, of the 6 prototype tractors, 5 were recalled to the factory where they were broken up. The 6th one remained out on farm and was forgotten about.  The farmer had bought the tractor and it was so reliable that it ran for many years without needing any repairs or new parts.  One day the tractor had a fault and so the owner sent it in to the local MF dealers to be repaired.  They had seen nothing like it before and did not know that the model had ever existed.  When the dealer enquired to the factory the factory offered to take back the prototype and supply the farmer with a brand new Massey Ferguson tractor and of course the farmer was highly delighted that he had been able to swap his old tractor for a brand new one. 

Now for the sad part of this story.  That 6th tractor was also broken up by the factory and any traces of the model’s existence were destroyed.  One wanders what would have happened had Massey Ferguson gone with the Ferguson design in favour of the Massey Harris designed 65.  Harry Ferguson was a man who not only understood the tractor market, but also knew his design would be a huge success.  Apparently Harry was of the opinion that Massey Ferguson would have killed off most of the competition from other tractor manufacturers if the company had brought the 60Hp Ferguson into production. 

This is the story that Vintage Tractor Engineer has been told.  If you have any more info then leave a comment.  Maybee you helped design the tractor, maybee you have driven one, or possibly you have a photograph?  Let us know.

Wow,

Just stumbled on this web site today. It brings back a lot of memories. We live in southwest Michigan in the United States (fairly close to Lake Michigan) on the crest of a small valley in the hilly part. My father and I bought a 4 wheel drive used from a local Ford Dealer. I thought it was called Super 6, but apparently not. I do know it was the based on the Fordson Supermajor. It did not have a live PTO and we traded it for a Super 4 (754) which I still have today. I also have a Ford 5000 and when something is wrong with one of them, I often switch parts until I find the problem. All of the parts from the Ford 5000 were interchangable as far as I know.

We have split both tractors in half and installed clutches, etc. in both of them. The only difference that I can remember is that I think the Super 4 had a 14 inch clutch and the Ford 5000 had a 13 inch clutch. The balls and sleeves? to the drive units which drive the front of the Super 4 went out and we searched all over for replacement parts, but couldn’t find any. We contacted many machine shops hoping that they could make them (even as far as Detroit, but not one could make them because they said they were metric. We ended up having regular PTO shafts welded to them and still use it some now.

We had a 125 cow dairy farm and the Super 4 plowed with a 5 bottom Ford plow in our hills, disked, and the reason we wanted the live PTO was to chop corn for the silos with which we used silage wagons with brakes (surge type brakes activated with pressure on the tongue). This was after a regular wagon pushed our chopper down the hill and the chopper and wagon went to the side of the Super 4 and rolled over.

That Super 4 did almost everything on our farm.

Ron Swartz
Marcellus, Michigan
USA

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