A brief overview and history of the different tractor brands included in Farming Simulator 22.
Case IH
The current Case IH manufacturing tractors, harvesters and other agricultural equipment was created in 1985 when Case and the agricultural division of International Harvester were merged.
Case itself has its roots in the 1842 founding of J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company by Jerome Increase Case. During the 19th century Case was one of USA’s major manufacturers of steam engines and subsequently started to make steam tractors and other self-propelled machines. It was also a major producer of threshing machines and other harvesting equipment.
Today the company manufactures construction machines as well as tractors, harvesters and other agricultural equipment. Case IH is one of the brands in the CNH International group, together with New Holland and Steyr.
Fendt
The company was founded in 1930 by Xaver Fendof in Allgäu, Germany, as a manufacturer of agricultural machines. The company was purchased by AGCO Corporation in 1997 and today makes tractors, harvesters, balers and telehandlers. In Germany it is the market leader in tractors.
Deutz-Fahr
The current Deutz-Fahr company was established in 1968 when the two companies Deutz and Fahr merged. Fahr was founded by by Johann Georg Fahr in Gottmadingen, Germany, in 1870 and made its first tractor in 1938. Deutz has a longer, more winding history that starts in 1864 with the founding of N. A. Otto & Cie. in Cologne, Germany. This was the first factory in the world to make engines. In 1921 the name was changed to Deutz AG and in 1938 the company through additional mergers and acquisitions became Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz AG and one of Germany’s largest industry groups.
Since 1982 all tractors have been produced under the Deutz-Fahr brand. In 1995 the agriculture business was sold to the Italian Group SLH which now is the SDF Group and manufactures tractors under the Deutz-Fahr, SAME, Lamborghini and Hürlimann brands.
Iseki
The Japanese company Iseki is one of the big manufacturers of tractors in Japan. Kunisaburō Iseki founded his first company in 1926 and started making farming appliances. The first tractors with the Iseki brand weren’t produced until 1963, when Iseki took over the equipment and licenses of Porsche-Diesel when they ended their production of agricultural tractors. The export of tractors to Europe started in 1968.
Iseki makes tractors with engine power between 10 kW (15 hp) and 95 kW (129 hp).
JCB
JCB is a British family-owned maker of tractors and construction machines founded in 1945 by Joseph Cyril Bamford 1945 in Staffordshire, England, and started out producing trailers. Later the company expanded into making excavators and backhoe loaders. In 1991 they produced the first version of their JCB Fastrac tractors.
John Deere
Deere & Company started as a blacksmith shop in 1836 in Grand Detour, Illinois, when John Deere moved there. In 1837 he invented a new steel plow which was more suited for the soils in the Midwest. The start of the tractor business came in 1912 and the first combine harvester was manufactured in 1927.
Today John Deere is the largest agricultural company in the world and their green and yellow of tractors are a common sight on the fields.
Lindner
Lindner is an Austrian manufacturer of tractors. The company is family-owned and was founded in 1946. The first tractors were produced in 1948.
Lindner tractors are mostly sold in Austria where the brand is the third biggest, but also exported to Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Slovenia, Netherlands and Norway.
Massey Ferguson
The company was created in 1953 when the Canadian farm equipment makers Massey-Harris and the Ferguson Company in the UK merged. The “Massey” part of the firm originated as a company in 1847 and Ferguson in the 1920s.
Today Massey Ferguson is part of the American AGCO group together with among others Fendt and Challenger.
New Holland
New Holland started in 1895 and took its name from the place were it was founded – New Holland, Pennsylvania – and made agricultural equipment. It did not, however, manufacture tractors. As a tractor brand New Holland only came into being when Ford bought New Holland and in 1986 created Ford New Holland. This company was in turn successively sold to Fiat in the 1990s and the classic tractor brand Ford was phased out. It’s blue colour remains as the colour of New Holland.
With the merger of Ford’s and FiatAgri’s agricultural divisions, New Holland became the brand of the new company’s tractors, harvesters and other machinery such as balers and mowers in 1996. In 1999 New Holland was merged with Case IH and the parent company got the name CNH Industrial.
Valtra
The origins of Valtra is to be found in the Finnish State Rifle Factory in Jyväskylä which started in 1928 and the Finnish State Artillery Factory. The companies were combined as Valtion Metallitehtaat the State Metal Works – after the Second World War and Valmet became the shortname for the company.
The first Valmet tractors were made in 1951 and the model was called Valmet 15. In 1979 the company acquired the Swedish tractor manufacturer Volvo BM from Volvo and Valmet became the market leader for tractors in northern Europe.
Since 2001 the tractor brand was changed into Valtra and since 2004 Valtra is owned by the American company AGCO.
Zetor
The Zetor brand of tractors originates from the Czechoslovakian arms factory Zbrojovka Brno which was founded in 1918. After the end of the Second World War, Zetor developed the prototype for the Zetor 25 tractor and between 1946 and 1962 the production totalled 158 570 tractors of this model. 97 000 of these for the export market. In 1964 Zetor started a cooperation with the Polish tractor manufacturer Ursus. 1968 Zetor started to cooperate with Japanese Iseki, who repurposed Zetor tractors for use in rice paddies. In 1983 Zetor started to export tractors to the USA and in the following years over 25 000 tractors where sold there.
At the end of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1990 the Zetor company was privatized and the tractor production separated from the Zbrojovka company. In the years from 1993 onwards, Zetor also manufactured John Deere’s 2000-series tractors, mostly for sale in South America.
Today Zetor produces tractors with the model names Utilix, Hortus, Major, Proxima, Forterra und Crystal. They also manufacture diesel engines.
