MEMORY LANE
In this photograph, David Woods is seen training the President of the Australian YFC to operate a Ford 2000. All photos: courtesy of David Woods.
A life with Ford
David Woods spent four decades with Ford Tractor Operations. He recalls some memories from the ’60s.
D
avid Woods started his career with the Ford Motor Company Ltd. on 7 March 1960, when he joined the International Statistics and Market Research section of the Product Planning department at Dagenham. This was a time when the Fordson Dexta and Major were big players in the market, but scheduled to be replaced by a brand-new range of tractors. It had been planned that the Tractor Division, as it was then known, would vacate the Dagenham plant by early 1964 to allow Ford to build car engines. Tractor production would switch to a new, purpose-built plant at Basildon. “No other tractor manufacturer had ever contemplated producing a completely-new product line and a new manufacturing plant at
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David with a Ford 2000 and Ransomes Cropguard sprayer in 1965.
the same time,” David told T&M. “It was a plan full of timing risks. Not only that, but the transmissions and rear axles were to be made in another plant in Antwerp, Belgium. “In the early ’60s, Massey Ferguson was stealing more and more of Ford’s traditional market share in the 50hpplus tractor class with the MF 65, that was a much more modern product than the Super Major. Something had to be done – and fast!
“The launch of the Dexta in 1957, followed by the Super Dexta, was beginning to hit Massey in its traditional sector. These models did not really require any change at all. However the die was cast and the final decisions to proceed with the 6X line were authorised by Henry Ford II.” The New Performance Fordsons were launched in the summer of 1963 and other than the new blue and grey livery there were few other major changes. The colour scheme was key, as it heralded the arrival of the new 6X range of tractors – the first to come out of Basildon. At this point David had joined the Product Training staff at the Mechanised Farming Centre, at Boreham House in Essex. His main qualification for this new job, he says, was farming ➤ Ford supplied a 3000 for several Silverstone-based race meetings in the 1960s. On this occasion, David ‘chauffeured’ Mike Hailwood and his motorcycle on a parade lap, to the crowd’s delight.
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