In 1977 the Ford Motor Company launched a new, four-model, high horsepower, articulated four-wheeldrive tractor range in North America. Built for Ford by Steiger, in Fargo, North Dakota, the four tractors provided more powerful options above the 153hp 9700 that was the largest tractor Ford produced at that time, and gave Ford dealers something to sell in what was a very important and growing sector of the marketplace.
Designed for the wide open North American plains, the FW range had a limited impact due to stiff competition from other manufacturers such as John Deere, International Harvester, Versatile and, of course, Steiger itself. However, when it came to the UK, this was a new area of the tractor marketplace; one in which Ford believed it could make an impact. The result was the introduction of the FW-30 and its success was such that it would soon be followed by the largest of the original American range, the FW-60.
Some FW facts
In this short series of articles, we’ve looked at how the original four American models of the Ford FW Series were launched in North America, and then how the FW-30 and FW-60 were introduced, with differences, into the UK. By the middle of the 1980s, only the FW-60 Automatic
