Oliver with a Ford asset number?

Gough55

New User
This message is a reply to an archived post by rustyplow on August 25, 2012 at 18:06:50.
The original subject was "Ford plow What is it?".

Hi,
I have a 1957 Oliver Super 55 Diesel. It has a brass plate above the serial number. It reads "Ford tractor div", and on the bottom it says "Engineering". Then in the middle it has the numbers "2825". I believe this to be a Ford asset number. But why would it be on a Oliver tractor. Any responses would be appreciated . I am restoring this for a FFA project, and would like to know if there is a cool back story.

Thanks,
Hunter Gough
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I do not know for sure why there would be a Ford asset tag on an Oliver tractor, but my guess would be that Ford probably bought some of their competitors machines so they could test them out and measure up the competition. Plus maybe "reverse engineered" some things if the competitor had some new feature that they wanted to implement, especially if the new feature was already patented by the competition, so they might be able to figure out how to engineer around the patent so they could offer the same or similar functionality without actually violating the other company's patent.
 
Or, on the other hand, they may have been trying to sell the SOS transmission to Oliver, so they tried to fit one. Maybe they just did fuel economy and endurance testing to see just how good it was. The 55 or 550 were very strong selling tractors. Maybe Ford admired it enough to put it in their museum.

Sometimes, reverse engineering got so serious, they'd strip a tractor and cost-estimate every part, to see what the profit margin might be. Helps to set their own price. Usually, it wouldn't be worth putting back together, probably scrapped.
 

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