David Brown (Company)

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David Brown tractor factory in Meltham Mills
David Brown 990 (1969) with Fritzmeier top

David Brown is a British technology company and has long been a well-known manufacturer of tractors. Together with Harry Ferguson , David Brown is considered one of the pioneers of modern tractor construction. Between 1946 and 1972, the well-known car brand Aston Martin belonged to the company and from 1947 also Lagonda .

history

David Brown, a trained model maker, founded his company in Huddersfield in 1860 . The primary business was the manufacture of wooden gears for the textile industry in Huddersfield. In 1910 the company became the largest gear factory in the British Commonwealth. On a trip through the USA in the 1930s, the degree of mechanization on American farms left a lasting impression on the grandson of the company founder. In 1929 another tractor pioneer, Harry Ferguson , built the "Black Tractor" with a patented hydraulic linkage. As part of a partnership between David Brown and Harry Ferguson, 1,350 Ferguson-Brown Type A were manufactured from 1936 onwards. However, the Ferguson Brown connection soon broke up. Ferguson left England for the United States, where he later partnered with Henry Ford .

The first David Brown tractor, the VAK 1 (vehicle, agricultural, kerosene, model 1) model was shown in 1939. Orders for 3,000 pieces had been received, the number could not be kept due to the beginning of the Second World War. Actual production was only 1,000 pieces. Production resumed after the war.

In 1946, the company was taken over by Sir David Brown, the founder's grandson, the automobile manufacturer Aston Martin and, a year later, Lagonda ; In 1955 the agricultural machinery manufacturer Albion was taken over.

From 1960 to 1963 David Brown delivered tractors to Oliver Corporation in the USA, before being present on the US market from 1963. In 1965 the familiar yellow-red color scheme was changed to white-brown. In the 1970s the group was restructured. In 1972 David Brown Tractors was sold to Tenneco International Inc. and incorporated into Case Corporation . The tractors were now produced with an orange engine and transmission block. The automotive division was sold to a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company . Since 1983 the tractors were no longer manufactured under the name David Brown, but under the Case logo. Tenneco International also took over the tradition-steeped International Harvester Company (IHC) in 1985 . The tractors now produced under the name Case-IH were sold in the red and black Case-IH color scheme. The Meltham Mills factory, where all David Brown tractors were manufactured, closed in 1988 after 52 years.

In 1998, the technology company David Brown was taken over by Textron . David Brown produces drive parts for locomotives, ships and tanks (including the Challenger 2 ). The classic gear division was sold to Clyde Blowers in 2008.

In 2016 David Brown merged with Santasalo to form David Brown Santasalo and forms a subsidiary of the Glasgow investment conglomerate Clyde Blowers Capital . According to its own information, the company had over 1000 employees at seven production sites in 2017.

Products

  • Ferguson-Brown A.

  • David Brown aircraft tug

  • David Brown 990

  • David Brown F.

  • Case David Brown 1210

  • Case David Brown

literature

Web links

Wikibooks: Tractor Lexicon: David Brown  - Learning and teaching materials
Commons : David Brown tractors  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus Herrmann, Tractors in Germany 1907 to Today , DLG-Verlags-GmbH, 2nd edition 1995, ISBN 3-7690-0530-9 , page 30
  2. ↑ Mirco De Cet: Illustrated Tractors Encyclopedia, Dörfler Verlag, page 59
  3. ↑ Nick Baldwin, Andrew Morland: Classic Ackerschlepper, 1st edition 2005 Motorbuchverlag Stuttgart, page 96
  4. ^ Sherry Schaefer and Jeff Hackett: Classic Oliver Tractors. Voyageur Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-616-73163-2 , p. 28 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  5. ^ Sherry Schaefer and Jeff Hackett: Classic Oliver Tractors. Voyageur Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-616-73163-2 , p. 29 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  6. ↑ Mirco De Cet: Illustrated Tractors Encyclopedia, Dörfler Verlag, page 65
  7. ↑ a b Heritage , at www.davidbrown.com , accessed September 4, 2015