Renze
Elite Member
Zetor wanted to introduce a direct injection diesel tractor in 1949, but the Soviets said no: thats way too advanced for a farmers tractor: Go build something bigger that we can use on collectivised farms: So they came back in 1954 with the direct injected Super.
In 1968 they were the first to mount a ROPS safety cab on rubber isolators. The tractor in question, the Crystal 8011, was a decade ahead of what the West was doing: it combined all modern developments in one tractor: the safety cab with no solid connection to the chassis, hydraulic actuated clutches for PTO, 4wd, and torque amplifier. Planetary end reductions, a constant mesh transmission. Lower link arm draft sensing. Other manufacturers could offer two or three of these features, but only Zetor had it all. Only JD with the 4230 was equal, but at a whole different price, at the exchange rate at the time.
However, because the revenues of the tractor industry was not invested back into the industry by the Communist government, but into military equipment to keep up in the arms race with the West, they started to lag behind in the 70s.
The Prague spring of 1968, when the Czech government liberalised the economy beyond the likes of the Soviets, resulting in Hungarian and Polish troops being ordered to overthrow the Czech government in order to replace them by Soviet puppets, was a writing on the wall: Otakar Diblik, the industrial designer who gave the Crystal its distinct look, escaped to Italy to work for an Italian design studio.
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