BY JIM ALLEN
By the mid-1960s, Minneapolis-Moline had a long history of success behind it, but in all that history, they had not yet built a big, six-cylinder-powered row crop tractor. What’s a row crop tractor? Mainly, it means a tractor with an adjustable tread that can be set to match the spacing of the crops. The tractor also usually has a three-point hitch for mounting the implements used in row crop farming. Many row crop farmers need a PTO as well.
In 1965, Minneapolis-Moline built a short pilot run called the G1000 Row Crop in versions fueled by diesel, LPG, and even a few by gasoline. These tractors were tested on farms, and a few changes were made before regular production started in November of 1965. M-M was slow to climb aboard the diesel bandwagon, but that changed once White bought them in 1963. Though their long-running 425ci six had started life in the late 1930s as a gasser, it had adapted well to diesel using the Lanova Power Cell combustion chamber. Updated in 1962 to 504ci with a 3/8-inch bore increase, the D504A-6 gave the new G1000 110 PTO horsepower in a Nebraska test done in November 1966. The G1000 Row Crop came standard with the Ampli-Torc, which was M-M’s trade name for a torque amplifier to split the gears. It allowed the operator to split each of the main five gears. The G1000 also had standard power steering, a dual-speed PTO, three-point hitch, and good-sized 18.4-34 rear tires. About 1,185 diesel G1000 Row Crops were made between 1965 and 1968—not including the run of 100 pilot models.