Guide Tractor History

John Deere didn't design its first successful tractor; it bought it. The Waterloo Boy, built in Waterloo, Iowa, was the tractor that got Deere into the business. Its two-cylinder engine layout stayed in John Deere tractors for another four decades.… Continue Reading →

The Fordson Model F did for the farm roughly what the Model T did for the road. It wasn't the first tractor, and in a lot of ways it wasn't a very good one. But it was cheap, it was… Continue Reading →

The Model D was the first tractor John Deere designed and built itself after buying the Waterloo Boy . It stayed in production for 30 years, from 1923 to 1953, longer than any other John Deere model. The design Like… Continue Reading →

When Ford stopped building the Fordson Model F in the US in 1928, the Fordson didn't die. It moved to Europe, got a bigger engine and some long-overdue improvements, and as the Model N it became one of the most… Continue Reading →

The Ford 9N is the tractor that brought the three-point hitch to American farms. That hitch is on nearly every tractor made today, which makes the little gray 9N one of the most influential machines ever built. The handshake deal… Continue Reading →

The 2N is essentially a 9N built under wartime conditions. The name change had as much to do with government price rules as with engineering, and some of the 2Ns built during the war were stripped-down tractors that most people… Continue Reading →

More 8Ns were built than any other farm tractor sold in North America, and it shows: seventy-odd years later you still see them at every farm auction, mowing roadside fields, and parked behind barns waiting for someone to get them… Continue Reading →

The NAA looks a lot like an 8N that's been stretched a little, but underneath it was a new tractor. It was Ford's answer to both the Ferguson lawsuit and the 8N's biggest shortcomings, and it set the pattern for… Continue Reading →

Ford's 1955–1957 tractors are known as the Hundred Series: the 600, 700, 800 and 900. The model numbers look confusing at first, since there are dozens of them (620, 640, 650, 660, 820, 860, 960 and so on). But the… Continue Reading →

The 600 Series is the entry point to Ford's Hundred Series, the lineup Ford introduced in late 1954 as 1955 models to replace the NAA . If you've seen a red-and-gray Ford utility tractor with a 640 or 660 badge… Continue Reading →

The 700 Series is the least familiar of Ford's Hundred Series tractors. Mechanically it's a 600 , with the same 134 cu in engine and the same transmission choices. It's built as a high-clearance row-crop tractor instead of a low… Continue Reading →

The 800 Series looks almost exactly like the 600 . The difference is under the hood: a 172 cu in four-cylinder instead of the 134, which gives it about a third more power. That extra power is why the 800,… Continue Reading →

The 900 Series pairs the 800's 172 cu in engine with the high-clearance row-crop layout of the 700 . It was the most powerful tractor in Ford's Hundred Series lineup aimed at row-crop farmers, and Ford's answer to the mid-size… Continue Reading →

The Ford 6000 was supposed to be the tractor that took on John Deere and International Harvester in the big row-crop market. It had a six-cylinder engine and a ten-speed powershift transmission, both advanced for 1961. It also had enough… Continue Reading →

The Ford 5000 was the flagship of the first tractor lineup Ford designed to be sold around the world. Before it, Ford's American tractors and its British Fordsons were separate designs. The 5000 and its smaller siblings replaced both, and… Continue Reading →

The Ford 7000 took the proven Ford 5000 and added a turbocharger. The result was a tractor with the size and weight of a mid-range utility and the power of something bigger. It's still one of the most admired tractors… Continue Reading →

In 1979 Ford replaced its top-of-the-line 8700 and 9700 with a new family of big two-wheel and front-wheel-assist tractors: the TW-10, TW-20 and TW-30. These were serious row-crop tractors aimed squarely at John Deere's and International Harvester's big machines. The… Continue Reading →

The TW-35 was the biggest tractor in Ford's second-generation TW lineup, introduced in 1983 alongside the TW-15 and TW-25. It replaced the TW-30 as Ford's flagship two-wheel-drive and front-wheel-assist tractor. Specifications Engine Ford 6.6 L (401 cu in) 6-cylinder diesel… Continue Reading →

The 8630 comes from the last years of Ford-branded farm tractors. By 1990, Ford's tractor business had merged with New Holland, and the 8030 series (the 8530, 8630, 8730 and 8830) replaced the long-running TW tractors. The 8630 sits second… Continue Reading →