Jared,
You are obviously well versed when it comes to tractors. What is your take on LS & Mahindra in relation to the Kubotas? Thanks for any insight you can render.
You know I'm going to be honest with you, I am not at all familiar with LS, I Did look them up and went to the website though. I'm actually very impressed with how well it's put together (the website) and how clean, crisp, and well oiled they are appearing to make themselves come across. I look at this as this is the image they want to give off to the world and so it tells me this is who they want to be. I will have to do more research and learn more about them. They are another S. Korean company and you know, the Koreans are our friends & allies (southern ones of course) and they are an intelligent people, so in what little I have read so far, they will come along and could very well be a fierce competitor in the tractor market in the years to come.
I would give LS a while to develop more as a brand in the US as it doesn't look like there are many dealers yet, what does that mean for parts availability? Service? Warranty? Looks like they are using the Mitsubishi engine, good engines that have stood the test of time, they are just not as popular or global I guess you could say as others. Let me clarify, Mitsubishi is as global as anyone else, it's just not an engine you are likely see when opening The hood of something. The engine I would say there should be no issues getting parts for since it is Mitsubishi backed, they are good engines so you would probably not need parts for this so much as you would likely be going to the dealer for something like a clutch, a broken hood latch, oil fill plug, Start switch, and body panels. How available are these parts? Besides the nut and bolts I really don't know these guys yet to say. Im betting woth only two factories in the US, parts availability is limited right now. Kubota has 4 with the giant warehouse in Georgia, also they have been bulding another huge addition to Georgia's plant for more assembly lines to run in the US. (4 warehouses: Georgia, Ohio, Texas, California, with a US corporate office in Torrence Ca. So they are distributed nicely across the US making parts abailability and distribution even).
I'm going to bet that as more of these tractor manufacturers start saturating the market in the years ahead we will see some buyouts, mergers, acquisitions, etc of some of these. Who knows the intentions of the buyer, maybe they keep the name, combine the name or just close the completion altogether. (I should also mention took Business as my major in college, go Boise State!) we'll see who the strong is, and may the fittest survive.
Mahindra- ok, mahindra I've known of for a while now, but not really been much of a competition at least in my area. Mahindra is Indian, they are far short yet on quality, they have a ways to go to catch up to the other tractor manufacture, even a little ways before catching Kioti. That's an opinion though. Like I've said, I don't like to beat down the competition. No manufactur would be in business if everyone thought they built crap. But, Mahindra could work on the fit & finish a little more. It just seems to me they kinda got in a hurry toward the end and went, "uh so now what do we do with this stuff hanging out of our tractor?" And they just slapped some covers or clips/ties etc over it. Fit n finish is a 3, maybe 4 at best. You will see obstructions they lay out right across the operator floor pan, I think I've seen hoses with a metal cover over it. I'm really not sure why. To me I want a clean, clear, and unobstructed floor pan on my machine, these get very slick and slippery a lot, muddy and snow packed. Even a lot of brush, hay, and weeds get caught in the crevices so I like to know that when I'm getting on or off I don't have a hazard to constantly work around or slip on. Not that this area gets hot, but I have seen tractors catch fire from brush/hay getting built up & ignites. The more places for things to get caught on, the more dangerous becomes. Since I'm not in much competition with mahindra yet, please enlighten me on their pricing, I am assuming they are somewhat comparable to Kioti, maybe Branson or Montana units? I can easily find out but ill let you fill me in.
This is another reason I joined today, there is plenty more for me to learn. And thank you in advance for teaching me as well. I would talk more on these tractors, & the engine in Mahindra, but I feel if I blab to much it gets boring, some people don't like to read books. But last note here, I'll do more looking into LS & get back, at first glance they look solid, many models tho for such a small hp range. They also look very very New Holland-esque to me. But Kioti looks Kubotaesque also. ....oh South Koreans, they work so hard to create good things just to then syle them to look like something thats already been done before. Lol. Stand by for more later.
I used to live not far from Elco, MN. 