Tractor heritage, news and features

Honey I shrunk the tractor

One of the most entertaining events that I have attended this year was the Fenland Working Tractors Weekend staged at Holbeach. The horticultural section was organised by VHGMC club member Alan Thacker and this year was hosted by kind permission of JH & AJ King Farms, and LFP Farms.

What I had come over to see was the first outing of Ivan Clark’s latest acquisition; he’s been after a Massey Ferguson 1010 compact tractor for some years now, and while I and many others have tried to put him off he has shown typical enthusiasm and has now managed to find one in reasonable condition. Indeed, he was so confident that he would find one that he bought a single-furrow Huard reversible plough and a single-furrow Twose plough before he knew where or when the tractor was coming from! An added bonus on the day was the appearance of Barry Bushnell with his Satoh compact tractor, which is an intentional David Brown lookalike. However, more on this later.

Growing market

For those of you that are not conversant with these market gardener’s machines, the MF1000 series was first introduced into Europe during 1977-78 as an answer to the growing market that had been spearheaded by Kubota and Iseki from Japan. Instead of having the cost of developing their own range of compacts, MF went to Japan to find another manufacturer with an existing product that they could re-badge and sell under their own name through their own dealer network. They settled on a tractor sold under the name of Hinomoto, and built by a company called Toyosha. These became known as the 1000 series tractors and consisted of the 1010 (16hp), 1020 (21hp) and 1030 (27hp) and were available in Britain from 1984 onwards; transmissions were either standard manual gearbox or hydrostatic drive and options of two- or four-wheel drive were available. These tractors received a lukewarm reception in the market place, but Massey-Ferguson persevered with them until they were replaced with the 1200 series in 1992-93, which was essentially an Iseki tractor with MF badges.

Ivan’s tractor is the smallest of the range; this has the 16hp three-cylinder Toyosha diesel engine fitted, which gives a modest 111⁄2hp at the PTO. It has the manual transmission, with three forward and one reverse and a hi-lo range gearbox that give a total of six forward and two reverse gears. These tractors may look small, but for the size of them they do an enormous amount of work considering they only weigh in at 600kg; put this together with the full specification – three-point linkage, 540rpm power take-off, four-wheel drive and three-cylinder diesel engine and you can see that they certainly aren’t toys.

Ivan’s intention is to use his tractor at working events and ploughing matches as much as possible to try to generate interest for the ‘classic’ side of horticultural machinery collecting. We have noticed already a growing number of Kubota, Ferrari, Iseki and Holder tractors, to name just a few, that are regularly competing at local level all around the country. While these do not fall into the vintage category, which is generally pre-1959, they are forced to compete in these classes simply because the vintage single-furrow horticultural class is the only one that they fit in with. So come on, you organisers, who’s going to be the first to put on a classic single-furrow horticultural class?

Intriguing

The second tractor that is no doubt intriguing some of you is not a David Brown, even though it is made to look like one. It is a Japanese Satoh tractor which was imported from the US and it was built to fit in with the David Brown range to fill a hole in the lower end of the market.

This all came about in the mid-1960s when Ford decided to cease trading with some of its North American dealers. These dealers refused to accept defeat and joined forces together to form the National Equipment Distributors Association (NEDA).

This association decided to settle on certain key brands of tractors to sell throughout their new network, and David Brown tractors were the favourite because of their proven success in Canada. However, there was no shortage of red tractors in America at the time, so NEDA asked DB to change their colours; DB decided on orchid white and took the opportunity to redesign the style of the bonnets to accommodate the American preference for inboard headlights. The smallest tractor in the DB range to date was the 770 which was advertised as being 36hp, but even this was too large for the horticultural market. The designers at Meltham were at a loss until it was suggested that their Japanese distributor may be able to help – this was a company called Satoh and they already made a series of compact tractors to sell to their home market.

Satoh

NEDA approached Satoh to build them a 25hp compact tractor for the groundcare and horticultural market; this emerged as the Satoh S-650G and received a bonnet and wings to match the styling of the DB range. Incidentally, this is also why the Bolens range of garden tractors appeared in white as well, to give a common ‘corporate’ appearance to the product range.

Barry’s tractor is fitted with a two-cylinder Mitsubishi diesel engine, rated at 21hp and has all of the usual features of three-point linkage, power take-off and high and low range gearbox. He tells me that there is only a handful in the country and I certainly believe him because I certainly haven’t seen another, but then again, have I? Unless you look at the lettering on the bonnet you wouldn’t know that it wasn’t a David Brown, so how many times have I walked past one and not noticed? I think I’m going to pay more attention in future.

Incidentally, Barry would like to apply for an age-related number plate for his tractor but so far we are finding difficulty in locating anyone who knows much about these machines. If any reader knows how to date these Satoh tractors from their serial number series please contact myself via the editor, please.