BIG BLUE BEHEMOTH

During the Fifties, there was a small, but growing, demand in Britain for large and powerful crawler tractors. Mostly, this came from the construction industry which was booming at the time thanks to the rebuilding of the country following the Second World War, but agriculture also needed tracked machines, especially as farm sizes began their unstoppable increase and bigger machines were needed to cope. Crawlers were perfect for working on heavier land in less-than-ideal conditions, with the steel tracks not only having superb tractive abilities but also the benefit of an increased soil contact area that helped prevent soil compaction, making these machines equally at home on top work, such as drilling and rolling, as well as primary cultivations in even atrocious weather conditions.

It was in 1952, though, that a brand-new entrant to the British crawler market made its arrival in the shape of the largest British-built crawler to date. The impressive looking, and sounding,