The Ford Motor Company had planned for 1964 to be a very special year. A year that would see all the old tractor models produced in America and in Britain replaced by a totally new range that was to be built worldwide in three different countries.
Brand new
Because of the very nature of a brand-new product and the fact that new facilities, such as the bespoke tractor factory at Basildon, were also included in the project, the original launch date of May 1964 had to be postponed to the end of the year.
For British farmers, this meant that the first they saw of the new tractor range, called 6X by Ford, was at the 1964 Smithfield Show held in December and indeed, what they saw was a complete paradigm shift that was totally unlike the Fordson tractors they had known for so many years previously in every single way. And it was 60 years ago that everything changed forever.
Out with the old
At the beginning of 1964, the Ford Motor Company in Britain was selling a three-model range of Fordson tractors built at the huge Dagenham factory in Essex. The tractors had
