The first sibling in the family to own an MF was my older brother, Wil. In the early Seventies, Wil bought his Massey Ferguson 35, three-cylinder (with the much admired Perkins engine). Wil was and still is, the second owner of this tractor. He bought the tractor as “used” from the Hollingdrake Automobile Co, which had a tractor dealership in the nearby market town of Llanrwst.
Hollingdrakes
Given the tractor’s first owners were local to Llanrwst, the tractor had likely been sold new through the Llanrwst dealership Hollingdrakes. It had branches in Manchester, Prestbury, Stockport and Colwyn Bay, and tractor dealerships in Llanrwst and St Asaph. It seems that Hollindrakes began selling cars well over a century ago, having started life as a firm of coachbuilders, and it was in the early Thirties that they opened their branch in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. The company was acquired by the Scottish Automobile Co in 1973, and now all that remains of the Hollingdrake Automobile Co are the badges that we occasionally see on the vintage and classic vehicles that were sold through their dealerships.
As a child, I was always fond of big brother Wil’s tractor simply because it had “Mickey Mouse ears”, or
