Sitting forlorn in a sea of brambles was a tractor with a cast iron radiator bearing three unfamiliar raised letters. Without a brush cutter, it was impossible to investigate further, though the letters seemed to spell RIP.
Lost and found
I was engaged in an encyclopaedia of world tractors at the time (it never happened, though some of the research appeared as a series in Tractor & Machinery). Naturally, I was intrigued and wondered if I’d made an error and that the letters were actually R&P, an ephemeral 1917 American tractor that had been discovered in New Zealand. The Ruggles and Parsons was made by the Republic Motor Truck Co of Alma, Michigan, where Frank W Ruggles was President from 1917 when the 30,000th truck was built. He left in 1920 to run the short lived Ruggles Motor Truck Co at Saginaw, Michigan. Both Republic and Ruggles succumbed to the Wall Street Crash and the R&P tractor had a much shorter life, failing to survive into the Twenties.
In 2009, Maurice Dufresne’s yard was cleared at the aptly named Villeperdue (“lost town”) in central France and
