Massey Ferguson has certainly not been a stranger to game-changing developments in the world of tractors and farm machinery; be it the revolutionary Ferguson System or the first successful, self-propelled combine harvester.
When the company launched the 3000 and 3600 Series tractors in 1986, it produced the first modern tractor, with fully integrated electronic controls and a ground-breaking performance monitoring system. Fast-forward almost a decade and it was time for a new tractor range; no easy task given the success of the 3000/3100 machines.
Modern tractors arrive
Now, in 2023, it’s perhaps difficult to appreciate just what an impact the introduction of the Massey Ferguson 3000 and 3600 Series tractors had on the agricultural world back in 1986. Electronics were still new technology on farm tractors, and just a handful of manufacturers were taking advantage of the technology. But Massey Ferguson took the giant step and put electronics at the very heart of its tractor design and, in so doing, produced the very first ‘modern’ tractors for the world market.
Massey Ferguson had, in fact, been producing tractors with electronically-controlled rear linkage draft control since the introduction of the articulated
