FarmTrac Tractors

[bluechip]

The company in India is Escorts, Farmtrac is their brand name which they adopted when they stopped selling tractors to Ford, I have been told in a meeting by the president of Farmtrac North America (aka Long Agribusiness) that there was at least one model of Ford tractor (sorry I don't remember the model number, I'll try to find it my notes from the meeting) that was built by Escorts for Ford that was sold in the US.

Escorts built Fords under contract from about 1969 till mid 80s (about the time Ford became New Holland). Escorts now holds controlling interest in Long (maybe all of it by now) and is changing the company name to Farmtrac.

The Farmtrac brand is applied to the a Ford heritage tractors manufactured in India by Escorts and to LG tractors mfg in S Korea. They now call the European built, Fiat based, tractor Longtrac. There is significant interchangeability of parts between the current Farmtrac 2wd utility tractors and Ford tractors, In fact Farmtrac offers a new bolt in replacement engine for several Ford tractors. Escorts has continued to build on the Ford designs and in fact is currently introducing 4WD versions of these tractors.

Of course assembly is done in Tarboro which I guess makes them as American as jsut about any other tractor under 100hp sold in the US.

Sort of confusing but hope this helps.

 

[Woodbeef]

Hmmmmm...........be interesting to see which Ford tractor sold in North America was built by Farmtrac. Also if you could get the serial number designation for those tractors. Never seen any Utility Tractors sold under the Ford name in North America not come from the Northern Hemisphere.

 

[bluechip]

I"ll see if I can find my notes from the meeting I attended where this was mentioned. (I want to say the model was 3910 but numbers have a way of getting twisted in my middle aged mind so dont rely on that).

I also learned at that meeting that Escorts and Carrero have a joint venture and all the Carrero transmissions up to about 85 HP are now made in India, This includes the 12x12 shuttle shift used on the FArmtrac 70 and 80, which are also supplied to Mahindra, and others, including John Deere. Not to be missleading, this is a separate plant from the Escorts plants making Powertrac and Farmtrac tractors. Certainly Escorts made Ford Tractors for the domestic market in India as well as other countries.

It does not surprise me that Ford did not make a big deal out of where these tractors were built, just as JD makes little mention of the place of manufacture of many of its tractors under 100HP today. Back in the 70's or 80's when this would have happened, awareness of world wide sourcing was not as widespread as it is today, In fact many are not aware of it today.

 

[Woodbeef]

I think you'll find that Escorts did not own FarmTrac back when they made the licensed tractors. The Escorts tractors stem from a totally different philosophy compared to the FarmTrac line.

The tranny plant JV is called Escorts/Carraro. Yes Carraro likes the quality coming from India so well they quit making that transaxle in Italy. Claas also has ties to Escorts.

Have you seen the Euro cabbed version of the mfd tractors yet? PolMot is the company in Poland who put the driven front axle under the FarmTrac tractors. They are called PolMot-Escorts over there. For an econo class tractor,they look pretty good.......

 

[bluechip]

My notes say that that Ford 3610 was produced in India, not necessarily all of them, but they did say some came to US although prime market servec by this plant was Euope and Asia.
I also made a note that the name was changed on 3-1-95 from Ford to Farmtrac. THe plant has capacity to to produce 72,000 units per year on a 2 shift basis. Thier facilities have undergone a $ 100,000,000 modernization program between 1997-2001.

 

[Woodbeef]

3610 were sold from 1982 till 86 I do believe. I can not find anything or anyone that says or knows anything about production in India though for the ones sold in North America,but some might have came in to bolster inventories at sometime. Like you said it probably was not advertised as a made in India model back then. Interesting all the same though. I'll have to start checking the ID plates on all the 3610s I see from now on.

 

[rkplano]

I am looking at a 300dtc in East Texas. They want $16,500 for the tractor with the FEL, 5' rotary cutter and 5'box scraper. It comes with a 3 year service warranty. Is this a good deal?

Thanks in advance
RK

 

[SHIFTY]

Sounds fair,
I sell the same machine under the TAFE name which is orange in color and I sell that tractor loader package at $14,200.00
Depending on make and features it seems to be about 1000.00 worth of implements

 

[rkplano]

Thanks for your help. What does TAFE stand fo? Are those tractors available in East Texas?

 

[CMunger]

Tafe stands for Tractor And Farm Equipment, (no kidding). In India the tractors are painted red and are sold as
Massey Ferguson. The larger ones, not the compacts. The compacts are built by LG.
Chuck M.