Austin Tractors

Like Henry Ford, Herbert Austin had farming roots. Both brought motoring to the masses and both attempted to take the physical drudgery out of farming by introducing mechanisation. Austin imported American machines in the First World War and heard about the revolutionary new Fordson. His take on the new rigid, frameless technology was the 1919 Austin R, built at his Birmingham car factory. The inexorable reduction of the price of Fordsons saw Austin move his tractors to the more protected French market, where they soon challenged Renault's dominance. A former leather works with farming estate at Liancourt, near Paris, became exclusive home to Austin's tractors, and diesel technology was adopted there long before it was introduced at Austin in England. This book tells the fascinating and largely untold story of the tractors made by one of Britain's biggest car makers, and also looks other uses of Austin engines in the Austin Champ and Gipsy.