Antique Farmall Tractors
Farmall was initially just a model name of a tractor produced by International Harvesters, but after great success, Farmall became the name of a great brand that farmers could always count on. The first tractor that was released as Farmall was a general-purpose tractor that had a narrow-spaced, tricycle front wheel design. Good ground clearance added to this design made maneuvering much easier for the farmer. An updated, more powerful Farmall tractor, the F-20, was released in 1932. Since the Farmall brand was now created, the initial Farmall tractor came to be called the "Regular".
Future Farmall tractors were known as the F-Series and included the F-30, F-12, and F-14, until 1938 when new models were simply called a certain letter, such as A, B, BN, and C. 1955 brought about yet another model name change, and they went to using numbers. Farmall tractors were originally painted battleship gray, but beginning in the mid-1930s, the color was changed to "Farmall Red".
In 1958, Farmall released all new six-cylinder 460 and 560 models. This release brought about a lot of enthusiasm in the company, but it only lasted a little while. Many reports of mechanical failure caused Farmall to recall all of the 460, 560, and 660s. IH failed to enlarge and re-engineer critical drive components on the new six-cylinder tractors. This caused the drives to quickly fail because of the stress of the more powerful engines. After this large mishap, IH had difficulty keeping the Farmall name afloat. For the next few years Farmall made some "price-effective" changes to their tractors to stay competitive, but eventually by 1973, IH dropped the Farmall name from their tractors. However, Farmall name plates were used on some tractors for a couple more years because of a large number of them that had already been produced.