Exotic Tractors
Yes, we expect tractors from automakers like Ford, Fiat, Mitsubishi, Volvo, and more. But these? At left is a Lamborghini, top right is a Porsche, and bottom right is a David Brown tractor—the David Brown who also ran Aston Martin and whose name lives on in the model designations starting “DB.” Most car enthusiasts know the story of how tractor-maker Ferruccio Lamborghini was unhappy with a Ferrari he bought and with Enzo Ferrari’s dismissive attitude, so she tarted his own exotic-car company. The tractor company he’d started in 1948 was a big deal by the early 1960s when he launched the car company (that’s a 1960 tractor in the photo). He sold half the tractor business in 1972, and the rest a few years later when bankruptcy loomed. Lamborghini-brand tractors are still made under the umbrella of the SAME Group, an Italian holding company, and we recently assaulted the Stelvio Pass in one. Slowly. The Porsche tractor (that’s the Junior diesel model in the photo) isn’t quite a car-company product. It predates the first Porsche cars with design work in the 1930s by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche. In the postwar era, he couldn’t go into production himself but licensed the design to Allgaier. That tractor, and the Porsche name, were in turn licensed to Mannemann AG, which formed a subsidiary, Porsche-Diesel Motorenbau GmbH. It built the tractors in a former Zeppelin factory from 1956 to 1963. So, we’re cheating—the car company didn’t make it. But it’s a Porsche-brand tractor! (There’s also a Ferrari-brand tractor, but that Ferrari is completely unrelated to Enzo and his business ventures). Finally, David Brown and Aston Martin. The firm was founded in 1860 and made patterns, then gears and transmissions. David Brown II, grandson of the founder, took over in 1931. In 1936, he joined a venture with Ferguson (of later 4WD fame) to make Ferguson-Brown tractors. It came apart when Ferguson heard a bigger name calling: Henry Ford. David Brown started making its own tractors, many of which were put to use on British airfields during WWII. Brown bought the sports-car company Aston Martin in 1947 (and Lagonda in 1948) and ran it as a subsidiary of David Brown Limited. That’s when the series of DB1, 2, etc., started. There was a spot of bother in the early 1970s and the car companies were sold off even as the parent firm went public and the family got out of management. In 1978, the tractor biz got sold to J.I.Case which put it under the same umbrella with International Harvester. The gear-making side of David Brown is now part of Textron.