Tractor & Machinery Magazine FORD’S FINEST: 1964 - 2014 Back Issue

Wandering round the Newark Show, I was again struck by how strong a part clubs play in the old tractors movement. And then I was in correspondence with Orry Mitchell, who is a leading light in the Southern Vintage Engine & Tractor Club on the Isle of Man, and we fell to discussing what the club had been involved in over the year. It turns out there was a working weekend at Cregneash
Heritage Farm, a Mad Sunday Vintage Rally during the TT Festival, the Johnny Corkish Road Run, St Mark’s Village Fayre, the Southern District Agricultural Show, the Royal Manx Agricultural Show, an ‘Island at War’ event around the Isle of Man Steam Railway, a Working Day, a TractorFest at Sulby, a Farmer’s Market near Castletown, the club’s annual ploughing match…….. You get the gist.
This is just one club in one place – multiply what its members organize and take part in across all the clubs over all the country and you get some sense of the contribution they make to the movement and also to the enjoyment of people who turn up at their events. As the year draws to a close let’s give due praise to the clubs and especially to those who give up their time to run them.
Meanwhile, I’m meant to be writing about this month’s magazine. It can best be described, I think, as covering the important and the unusual. The important is the Golden Anniversary of Ford’s factory at Basildon, to which Howard Sherren pays tribute by looking at the best of the tractors to
have come out of it over 50 years. The unusual is an MF 35 that has been beefed up to the point where it can take on a Lotus racing car. It’s a bit of a freak (clearly) but an interesting project. We also look at an electric Ford: there was a scheme where they plugged them on to the overhead power lines, but this takes the safer solar option. In between the extremes, there are plenty of other features that I hope you’ll enjoy.