Why I love... UNIMOGS
BY JACK HARRISON
Here’s one for you: what is the size of a small house, can get to almost anywhere on the planet and has been around since 1948? The Universal-Motor-Gerät, better known as the Unimog, of course.
The story of this do-anything behemoth starts against the exceptionally bleak backdrop of postWW2 Germany, where former aircraft engineer Albert Friedrich set about designing a tractor. He was worried Germany would be prevented from re-industrialising and would instead have to shift its focus to farming. It would need four-wheel drive and some power take-off (or PTO) points to drive farming implements, and it had to be wide enough to straddle two rows of potatoes.