Ever See an Ivory Oliver 70?

Enlarge Image Image Gallery This Oliver – a 1948 – came along well after the year when the Oliver Farm Equipment Company sponsered a contest to select color combinations for their farm tractor. Farmers who "voted" in the promotion were given commemorative leather key cases.

Last month, I wrote about the trend that developed during the late 1930s and early 1940s toward brighter paint colors and more streamlined sheet metal (read Tractor Designs: Styled or Unstyled? from the February 1999 issue). 

I ran across an interesting story from 1937, about a contest sponsored by the Oliver Farm Equipment Company, that let farmers choose the color combination they liked best on their Oliver tractors.

The Oliver Company conducted the "Oliver '70' Tractor Color Voting Contest" at the principal state and sectional fairs of 1937. The Oliver fair exhibit consisted of a voting table surrounded by six specially painted Oliver Row Crop 70 tractors. Farmers were asked to look over the differently painted machines and indicate their choice on a ballot.

A "nationally known color specialist" had selected the six color combinations:

– chrome green body, red trim and ivory lettering;

– regatta red body, aluminum trim with white lettering;

– chrome green body with tangerine trim and white lettering;

– yellow body, black trim and red lettering;

– China gold body with tangerine trim and ivory lettering;

– ivory body, Chinese gold trim with red lettering.

Oliver gave each farmer who voted a "handy leather pocket key case."

A major event in Charles City, Iowa, at the time was the annual Oliver Tractor Plant employee picnic. Farmers from all around, as well as the residents of Charles City, turned out to watch the big parade of Oliver farm equipment. At the Aug. 14, 1937 parade, "six of the prettiest young ladies in the Oliver organization" were chosen to drive the six specially painted tractors in the two-mile-long parade.

The article claimed that voting had been very heavy at the Illinois State Fair and at two Michigan fairs, but it was too early to announce the results. Apparently one of the chrome green combinations won, as Oliver used that color well into the 1950s.

Wouldn't it be a fantastic stroke of luck to find a 1937 Oliver 70 that had been painted one of these custom colors? I'll bet an ivory Row Crop 70 would raise a lot of eyebrows at shows. Do any Farm Collector readers remember seeing these Oliver exhibits at the local fairs? I've seen the little leather key cases that were given as prizes for voting, but I doubt that many have survived.