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The Victor:
Converting a Gas Engine into a Tractor
Leslie C. McDaniel
In 1913, not every farmer had the means to trade up from horses to horsepower. The Victor Traction Gear Company moved quickly to fill that void, providing the equipment to convert a gas engine into a tractor.
"Basically, it's a kit tractor," says Gary Cooper, Reynolds, Ind., who, with Gene Dallinger, owns a 1913 Victor. "They sold the gears and wheels, and you put it together. You'd use whatever motor or engine you wanted. It was made for hay baling, grinding, other small jobs, and some people used it to fill silos. It was not made to go in the fields and plow, but some people used it for that."
It was a simple premise: The company shipped gears, steel wheels, steering wheel and seat.
Almost anything, it seems, was possible. Gary has an original Victor manual, filled with lofty statements (but no pricing information).
"It says one guy in Minnesota, basically a teamster, used four horses to pull a wagon. When he got the Victor, he got rid of all four horses, and ended up using it to pull two wagons," he says. "It'd go 1.5 mph, and he put 2,000 miles on it."
Gary's Victor has one forward speed, and one reverse.
"It was actually pretty progressive for its time," he says. "There were several tractors then that didn't have reverse."
Related memorabilia seems not to exist.
"I've never seen an ad for the Victor," he says. "And there were no dealers for it; it says in the book that they cut out the middleman. For the poor man, it was quite a deal. They'd ship it by rail (it probably weighed 1,000 pounds with the gears), and you'd go pick it up at the station."