When Did Mercedes Stop Building Tractors (And How Long Did It Build Them)?

The query of how lengthy Mercedes-Benz has made tractors isn’t simple. One of the businesses that was merged to kind Mercedes-Benz in 1926 had produced tractors earlier than they got here collectively. In 1919, Benz launched the Benz-Gaggenau tractor. Afterward, a new Mercedes-Benz OE tractor appeared in 1928, with simply 100 examples made earlier than it was dropped in 1935.

However, the trendy historical past of Mercedes-Benz as a tractor maker begins in 1973, when the primary MB-trac tractor rolled off the manufacturing line. The production-ready tractor had been proven to the international stage at 1972’s German Agricultural Society Exhibition in Hanover. The MB-trac shared many elements with the Mercedes-Benz Unimog multi-purpose car, one of the rarest Mercedes-Benz vehicles in the United States. While this permitted Mercedes-Benz to supply the MB-trac affordably at low manufacturing volumes, it additionally allowed the corporate to make a variety of tractors that might carry out a wide range of duties from light-duty work to heavy towing, together with forestry and highway development duties.

The MB-trac tractor launched various improvements to the tractor trade. It featured all-wheel drive as normal, with all 4 wheels being the identical measurement, similar to the Unimog. The cab’s central place let the MB-trac present house for attachments on the entrance, the rear, or on the physique itself, with hydraulic connections for balers or plows on the rear or the entrance. Production of the MB-trac continued till 1991, when it was discontinued as a result of it was too costly to make. Ford also stopped making tractors that 12 months.

In 1980, Mercedes-Benz launched a tractor to the market that will stay within the MB-trac lineup till manufacturing resulted in 1991. This was the MB-trac 1500, which featured a Mercedes-Benz 5.7-liter OM 352 turbodiesel engine that produced 150 horsepower, a major determine for its time. As Mercedes-Benz’ range-topping heavy-duty tractor till 1990, the MB-trac 1500 got here geared up with air brakes, CAT III rear linkage, differential lock and four-wheel drive activated by air stress, and suspension on the entrance axle as normal tools. Options for the MB-trac 1500 included one thing uncommon — the aptitude to drive the MB-trac 1500 in reverse whereas the motive force regarded ahead, because of the dashboard and driver’s seat rotating 180 levels.

Then in 1990, the title of top-of-the-line MB-trac tractor, when it comes to energy, went to the brand new MB-trac 1800 Intercooler (443 collection), with a 6.0-liter six-cylinder turbocharged diesel engine fitted with an intercooler. Its output was 180 horsepower, with 14 ahead gears plus reverse. The firm produced the 1800 Intercooler from 1990 to 1991, the ultimate two years of MB-trac manufacturing, ending 18 years after Ferruccio Lamborghini sold his tractor-making business. Fewer than 200 models of the MB-trac 1800 Intercooler had been produced.

So the Mercedes-Benz Unimog stays as the inspiration of the fashionable Mercedes-Benz tractor heritage story. The Unimog remains to be being made in the present day for a wide range of robust jobs that take it off the overwhelmed path, together with some which are agricultural in nature.