Mower pioneer vs high-tech workhorse

Although there had been several “self-propelled” machines with disc or drum mowers working around Europe for some time, many of these used forage harvesters as the power house, which were then subsequently kitted out with mounted mowers instead of a pickup or maize header.

Krone designed the Big M purely as a machine for mowing grass. For the German machinery maker, the Big M unit was not only the first production self-propelled mower but also the first self-propelled forager machine it had ever built.

For the basic vehicle, the designers opted to use