Henry Ford would have had a field day at the 2023 Ford/Fordson Collectors Assn. (FFCA) national show held in conjunction with the Southern Indiana Antique Machinery Classic Iron Show in Evansville in June. Showcasing more than 220 tractors and 90 implements, the FFCA display celebrated the heritage of Henry Ford and his one-time business partner, Harry Ferguson.
The display included everything from Vindex toys to chainsaws, pedal tractors to mechanics’ kits, tractors, implements and trucks representing just about every farm-related product Ford built – including a rare prototype tractor making its debut at the Evansville event.
“There was something weird about it”
When Roger Elwood, Sharon, Connecticut, got a tip on a collection of 25 tractors being offered for sale, he checked it out – but he took only one home: a Ford 8N. “It looked like a normal 8N that had been widened by a previous owner, but the brake pedals were side-by-side,” he says. “Something was just not lined up right.”
And that wasn’t all. “The three-point arms on the back had been bent in to allow for the narrowing of the tractor,” he adds, “and the fenders had been aligned to be narrower. The steering arms had been brought farther in and the front ones were shorter. I knew there was something weird about it.” But he had no information on the tractor’s back story, other than the fact that it came from a tobacco farm in Connecticut.
Meanwhile, Ford enthusiast Kyle Doty, Highland, Illinois, was sorting through a collection of 200 vintage black-and-white Ford factory photos he’d bought from a Ford engineer. About half of the photos showed new tractors at the Romeo, Michigan, Ford plant in the 1950s and ’60s. Some of the shots looked familiar. “I’ve seen some of those pictures in literature,” he says. “But some of them were never meant to be seen outside of the Ford organization.”
Factory photos tell the story
Two random paths intersected at a Wisconsin show when Roger stopped for a chat with Kyle, who had brought his new trove of Ford photos with him. As Roger leafed through the photos, he paused at one. “I have that tractor,” he says. When he flipped the photo over to see what might be on the back, he saw the words vineyard prototype.
No records are known to exist on prototype production figures, but most who viewed the tractor at the FFCA display had no expectation of running into another one anytime soon. “There’s nothing close to this but pictures,” Roger says.
“I’m sure the expectation was that the tractor would be used in a vineyard, but it’s hard to drive; it’s just too narrow, nearly a foot narrower than a standard 8N,” he notes. “But Ford had a lot of money to play with.” Roger’s protégé, Stone Scasso, Sharon, Connecticut, says the prototype clearly had issues. “The tractor is really hazardous,” Stone says. “It’d rip your leg off without the fenders.”
Photos were the only guide
Safety is of little concern when it comes to a rare tractor. Job number one was a correct restoration of a tractor no one knew existed. “Without Kyle’s photographs, it would have been impossible,” Roger says. “The pictures were a lifesaver. We wouldn’t have known the correct placement of anything. Just figuring out the seat height alone would have been a problem.”
And then there was the matter of motivation. “I probably wouldn’t have restored it if not for Stone bugging me,” Roger admits. The tractor was basically complete when he got it, but it was barely running. “It had been well used,” he says. Roger restored the tractor himself, putting some 500 hours into it before it was completed in 2022. But that’s not the part of the prototype that interests him the most.
“The glory of this hobby is the camaraderie,” he says. “Everybody has a story.”
Tractor built a century ago
One of the oldest Fordsons at the show was displayed by Dean Simmons, Fredericktown, Ohio. Built just seven years after Henry Ford launched the line in 1917, Dean’s 1923 Model F was equipped with a Ferguson-Sherman plow built in Evansville.
The oldest piece in his collection, the Model F signaled the beginning of Dean’s hobby. “I got my father-in-law’s Ford 8N and when my dad died, I got his Fordson,” Dean says. “Ford is in my blood. I’ve never owned tractors in any other color. And I still farm with Ford tractors. Everybody around me uses John Deere; I’m the lone wolf. My newest tractor is a 1977 Ford 9700. That’s awful to say. But when the computers go down on the newer tractors, the tractor goes down.”
Years ago, at a show in Missouri, Dean met H.R. Shoemaker, a retired Ford service rep from Plattsburg, Missouri. “He had a lot of Ford memorabilia that he was starting to sell,” he says. “I bought a pith helmet from him that he was given at the premiere of the Ford 8N in 1947 and the clock he was given when he retired.”
Shoemaker was working for Ford in 1947, when the company started building the Model 8N. “He had all kinds of service bulletins and things you couldn’t get anywhere else,” Dean says. “I thought I knew a lot, but he had so much knowledge. He was really good on the Ford 6000 and Select-O-Speed equipment.”
“Compared to farming with a horse, it was a great thing”
Charlie Hardesty, Valparaiso, Indiana, started collecting tractors in 1992, but his connection with Ford goes further back. “I’ve been messing with Fords since I was in the fifth grade,” he says. “My dad would not buy a Fordson. He said all they did was break arms.”
Six years after his dad’s death in 1984, Charlie bought a Fordson. “Fordsons are very cantankerous,” he admits. “They’re very hard to start and they overheated all the time. Compared to today’s tractors, the Fordson was very awkward. But compared to farming with a horse, it was a great thing. It was the number one-selling tractor in its day.”
The first tractor he drove was his dad’s 1951 Ford 8N. “Dad thought he’d get a couple of tractors for my brother and me, keep the boys out of trouble and get us started farming,” he says. “He brought home an 8N, overhauled it, painted it with spray paint – and sold it. ‘If the guy who sold it to us can make money,’ he told us, ‘we can make money.'” For the next 20 years, the elder Hardesty bought and sold tractors.
Some 49 years later, Charlie tracked down his dad’s original 8N at an auction, bought it and restored it, complete with an umbrella and sickle bar mower (see it on the front cover of this issue). The impetus for a collection, it is now known as “The culprit.”
On the seventh day, he hauled it home
Another Hardesty tractor – also a Ford 8N – was elevated onto a stilts kit produced by Tractor Stilts Co. in Omaha. After seeing a friend’s handsomely restored stilts tractor in another collection, Charlie learned that the collector had another awaiting restoration. “It had been left outside in dead row,” he says, “and it was very rough.”
Charlie saw the piece on Tuesday and made an offer immediately, but it took another five days to close the deal. “We talked every day,” he says. “It took six days to get that tractor bought and on the seventh, I hauled it home.”
First, though, he had to stop at a local lumberyard. The tractor’s rear wheels were too wide for his trailer, so he had 2x6s cut to 8-1/2-feet lengths. Placing the new planks crossways on the end of his trailer got the job done.
Charlie tore the rig apart in 2011. Just before the Covid pandemic in 2020, he began working on the stilts conversion kit. Finishing the restoration in 2020, he gave it an appropriate nickname. “I call it my ‘social distance’ tractor,” he says. “With those stilts, it keeps me socially distanced.”
The finished project, he says, is very fun to drive. “It’s not at all tippy,” he says, “and it draws a lot of attention in a parade.”
Prepared to play the long game
Nearly 50 years ago, Jeff Wright, Altoona, Pennsylvania, stumbled onto a tractor while hunting deer in rural New Jersey. “I asked about the tractor,” he says, “but the owner said he was going to have his buddy fix it up for him.”
Patient but determined, for years and years Jeff – a U.S. Navy veteran – inquired about buying the tractor, a 1940 Ford 9N built in the second year the model was produced. Finally, he showed his hand. “This one is special,” he told the owner, an aging stockman and the son of a World War II veteran. “I know your dad bought it for you.”
Honoring a soldier’s service
Chester Kolbe was a boy of 12 when his dad bought him a used 9N tractor with a sickle-bar mower. A handful of years later, the New Jersey farm boy was drafted and plunged into World War II as a replacement rifleman. Fighting in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest in the final four months of 1944, Chester found himself in the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and the longest single battle ever fought by the U.S. Army.
“He had two months of hell on earth,” Jeff says. “He was wounded twice and continued to fight, as there was no other choice. He was terrified. He promised God if he got home alive, he’d never leave his farm again.” When the shy, introverted soldier did return home, he never forgot his promise. “He only left home once a week,” Jeff says, “to go to church early with his brother Fred, and stop at the general store for hot chocolate and a Sunday paper.”
Over the course of three years before Chester’s death, Jeff and Chester slowly built a friendship. The two talked about the family farm and Chester’s livestock operation, but never of his war experience. “He never spoke of it again,” Jeff says.
Determined to buy and restore the tractor as a way of honoring Chester’s service, Jeff persisted but made no progress for decades. Chester and Fred had passed when, in 2018, Chester’s son, Roger, finally let the tractor go.
Committed to the journey
Tractors do not escape decades of abandonment unscathed. “Trees and vines had grown up through it,” Jeff recalls. “We made five or six trips in two and a half months to chop weeds, clear limbs and get the old tires off. We had to roll new tires into the woods one at a time. And the engine was stuck.”
Once he got the 9N home, Jeff realized he did not have the machining expertise needed to bring the tractor back to life. He took it to a restorer, who made it clear that it would be an expensive journey to do it right and the work could take up to a year. Jeff did not hesitate. “You don’t restore tractors to save money,” he says. “You do it because you love the tractor, the story behind it and you want to preserve it.”
In 18 months, Jeff and his brother Matthew put together a trio of Fords: the 1940 Ford 9N, a 1952 Ford 8N (Matthew’s) and a 1953 Ford Jubilee. “All three are now fully rebuilt with primo paint done for us by a wonderful fellow and his wife in Indiana, Pennsylvania,” Jeff says. “Dave his crew and wife Ann of Arthurs Tractors are the dream team!”
Jeff shows the 9N with a 1940s-era two-bottom Fordson plow with sod cutters with original chains. “It’s a Dearborn plow created for Ford tractors,” he says. “It’s was rusty but in very good shape. The young family man I purchased it from told me he used to play on it as a kid always in the back of the barn inside. It was a gem of a find for me.”
Leslie C. McManus is the senior editor of Farm Collector. Email her at LMcManus@ogdenpubs.com.
