Streamlined Tractor Design: Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The Farmall F-22 in 1938 when it was beginning to look more like the subsequent production Farmall H. Courtesy Wisconsin Historical Society, image ID: WHi-27595.

In the 1920s, American designers such as Henry Dreyfuss and Raymond Loewy established the first important industrial design studios in the U.S. They emphasized the beauty in functionalism, elimination of unnecessary decoration and simplified rearrangement of components. Among the first products to reflect this aesthetic planning were automatic refrigerators designed by Loewy, and telephone equipment and clocks designed by Dreyfuss.

Raymond Loewy was born and educated in France and served as an engineering officer in the French army during World War I. After the war, he immigrated to the U.S., where he became an industrial designer with a reputation for a flamboyant lifestyle.

At the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, Loewy won awards for his designs for the Coldspot refrigerator and the legendary streamlined GG-1 electric locomotives that served the Pennsylvania Railroad for many years. He was responsible for the radical 1934 Hupmobile with headlights that were streamlined and made part of the fenders. Loewy continued his futuristic automobile designs with the 1939 Studebaker Champion and the revolutionary 1947 Studebaker Starlight Coupe, as well as the 1961 Studebaker Avanti. Even the familiar pinched-center Coca-Cola bottle is a Loewy design.

Loewy's main claim to fame among rusty iron lovers, however, is the work he did for International Harvester Co. In the mid-1930s, tractor builders were beginning to see the advantages of making their products more attractive by adding streamlined sheet metal. Oliver led the way with the streamlined row crop 70 in 1936. IHC management invited Loewy to design a new line of Farmall tractors then being developed by the company. He spent a couple of years perfecting the design and on Aug. 9, 1939, at a big Farmall Day celebration in Rock Island, Ill., the all-new Farmall H and M models were introduced to the public. Loewy's classic styling of the new Farmalls helped make IHC a leader in row crop tractor sales until the 1950s.

Raymond Loewy also designed the new IHC logo with block letters consisting of a lower case "i" superimposed upon an upper case "H." The resulting symbol roughly resembled the front view of a (square-headed) man driving a Farmall tricycle tractor (with square tires). The logo was adopted in 1946 and became famous all over the world as the identifying symbol of International. In fact, a slanted version of the old "man on a tractor" logo still can be seen on every Case-IH machine made today. The standardized dealership buildings with the familiar red central pylon bearing the IH logo and the dealer's name were also Loewy's work. Strangely, I can find no evidence that Loewy had a hand in designing the beautiful 1937 D and 1941 Model K International trucks.