Quirky, quintessentially British and extremely noisy

The first tractor I remember lusting after was a rusty old Field Marshall. I was at a vintage rally (a show featuring all manner of old vehicles) with my father, and we were wandering around looking at the exhibits when I saw some people starting up this great rusty hulk of a tractor.

I had never seen anything like it in my life. When it started, it shook and shuddered like something that hadn’t been fired up in a hundred years. It issued forth great bangs from the vast chimney stack and I remember asking my father what on earth it was. He told me it was a Field Marshall and that he remembered them in use back in the days when threshing teams travelled from farm to farm.

It seemed so ancient, as though it pre-dated any vehicle I had ever seen before. I was quite amazed when my father said it was probably from the 1940s or ’50s, as it looked far more archaic than that.

The Field Marshall was driven into the ring with all of the other more ordinary-looking old tractors. When it sped up, so did the frequency of the loud bangs from the vast exhaust. When it was parked up