Ford Farm Toys

All of us know Henry Ford, the man who brought us the Model T, popularized the automobile for everyday use and also invented the assembly line.  Ford was an inventor and innovator never short on ideas.  After his initial success with the Model T, the first mass produced automobile, Henry longed for more challenge and he had ideas.  To help grow his ideas of building farm equipment, Henry Ford started a separate company called Henry Ford and Son Company to produce tractors under the Fordson name as not all his shareholders were accepting of the idea to build farm equipment.  Eventually Ford bought back all shares in his company and once he had control, he then merged the farm equipment company back into Ford Motor Company.


Fordson started to mass produce tractors in 1919 following the war. The first model was the Fordson F which proved to be incredibly successful with over 750,000 models sold in the U.S. in the decade of it's production. After starting production of tractors in the United States, they later shifted production to England and Ireland and imported them back to the U.S.

Known early on for their difficulty starting, Fordson tractors had to be cranked, which required an incredible amount of strength on the part of the operator. From today's standards, early Fordson tractors were very crude, from their starting sytem to their gearing system. For most of the 1920's, the largest customer for Fordson tractors was the Soviet Union were they became very popular among poor farmers.

Eventually when Ford dropped the Fordson name and replaced it with Ford, they brought out the highly popular Ford 9N in 1938 and the even more popular 8N in 1948. The Ford 8N sold over 500,000 units and were very popular on farms throughout North America. Even into the 1980's, these small tractors were still in use on many farms and used for light duty activities such as pulling a wagon or raking hay.

Fast forward many years into the 1980's when Ford expanded it's tractor business by purchasing Sperry-New Holland. This decision didn't last long and Ford sold its tractor division to Fiat i 1991. Fiat continued to use the Ford name on their tractors until 1998, when they were renamed New Holland.

Fords history in the United States as both an automobile company and a tractor company is a piece of history that should be long remembered and what better way to commerate this history that with a diecast Ford tractor.