Egon said:
So you think the ONLY tractors with 3-point and draft control are Fergusons and Ford N's? I do believe I've seen millions of Deere's, IH's, Molines' Olivers, Cases, McCormicks, Valtra's, JCB's, Duetz, Allis Chalmers, ect, also with 3-point and draft control. It's been virtually impossible to buy a FARM tractor WITHOUT a 3-point hitch in the last 35 or 40 years, short of those big 4WD's. Seems to be a relatively small "following" of antique collectors still using drawn plows, or giant 4WD's that use plows too big for being mounted, but the vast majority of your "total farming world" dropped the archaic drawn plow decades ago. Drawn plows under 4 bottoms went out of fashion half a century ago. I have been involved in farming my entire life (60 y o) and don't recall ever seeing a NEW drawn plow of less than 5 bottoms for well over 50 years. When the "Wheatland" or "standard tread" tractors of the 40's through early 70's went out of favor, there's been virtually no market for smaller (under 6 bottoms) drawn plows.
And about that "cult following in certain areas"..... FordN's sold well over 1/2 million units in the US alone. TO20,TO30,TO35, MF35,MF135 sold WORLDWIDE near 2 million units. The MF135 alone was produced in numbers over 225,000 in Detroit and 265,000 in England. That doesn't even account for the 135's built in France. At one time, 1 out of every 4 tractors sold in England was a 135 Massey Ferguson. Massey still sells tractors to this day that have very strong simularities to those 50 year old TO's. They sell in large numbers WORLDWIDE. Since their inception, the N series Ford and the TO series Fergusons were produced in greater volume that ANY tractor since. The TO Series Ferguson has been called the most immitated tractor on earth.
I'd say that's quite a "cult following in certain areas" without even bothering to include the rest of the models built by those 2 manufacturers. Apparently, "certain areas" must mean the planet earth
What a shame... If only we could go back in time and let Poor Harry Ferguson and poor Henry Ford know their tractors would never catch on beyond that insignificant "cult following", we could have saved them from building and selling millions of them.
Oh,