In this, the final part of our Muir-Hill tractor story, we turn our attention to the last years of tractor production. The name of Muir-Hill had become firmly linked with agriculture, as well as the construction industry within which it originated. But the company’s core products – loading shovels, rough-terrain forklifts and tractors – had also become quite a common sight on British farms.
However, the early 1980s saw things for Muir-Hill come to a pretty abrupt end, as a combination of economics and the proliferation of four-wheel-drive tractors from mainstream manufacturers, ate into the company’s profitability in the agricultural sector.
A big year
Nineteen seventy-eight had been a big year for the Gloucestershire-based firm; not only had it launched the new Series III range of tractors (complete with the new Spacecab), but it had also undergone the latest in a long line of parent company shake-ups which, in January of that year, saw the organisation become part of newly-formed Babcock Construction Limited.
Throughout Muir-Hill’s history it had become routine for the business to change hands. Originally located in Manchester, building railway locomotives and shunting tractors based on Fordson skid-units in the early 1920s,
