Demonstrators ?

The mention of Demonstrators earlier brings up a subject that has always puzzled me a little. My stint with CASE started late in 1973 so I missed the Demo era and the talk was the tractors would soon be WHITE! Well the 2wd factory Demo's are easy to identify because of the paint jobs. (if someone has not covered it up with different colors) But the 1470's are another story, some are black, some have the normal paint job but say Demonstrator on top of cab, some like Nutty's used to be a Demo but say nothing( I think Tom mentioned that, sorry if I'm wrong) Now my 14 has a tag that says it is but the origginal owners son says it was not a Demo because his father ordered it. For some reason it has the tag and it reads "This is a regular production tractor identified as a Demonstrator for CASE POWER and EQUIPMENT." Sorry for the poor picture the flash always caused a glare. Does anyone remember why the confusion on the 1470"s. Rod.

Rod, the 1470's when introduced were very hard for dealers that were smaller volume or in a area that was not "Traction King" country so to speak as we were in, by that I mean we have some what small fields here compared to the Dakota's and Montanna to name just a few that sold many more of them than us, and in 70 and 71 during the Golden/Blacknight era we had 5-7 signed orders for 1470's in our files so thst we could have one in stock as at that time we as a low volume 4 wheel drive dealer was required to have a signed order to receive one in a timely manner, hope that explains how in demand the some what low producion numbers Case was building of the 1470 model, as to the regular colored 1470's being Demo's,, dealers who were in a area that had a customer base that leaned toward 4 wheel drive sales and wanted a 1470 for their Demo unit but already had one or more 1470's in stock and did not want to order another just for the program were allowed to "tag" ( some like mine even had a "Demonstrator" decal applied) them as a Demo unit and were sold as such, the dealer was suppose to "Demo" the units to as many potenial customers as possible and put at least 200 hrs on the meter before being sold and then Case would give a discount to that unit because of the hrs on them under the Demostrator program, BUT that was not always the case and some Demos were sold with out the "required" hrs of Demo time and different people involved, to hopefully explain that a little further, a 1470 for us was a easy sell to a person who needed the big tractor power, if we sent one out on an agreed Demo it sold, I only remember one time we demoed a 1470 and it came back to the shop unsold, that demo did sell a new 1974 1370 and 6 bottom semimount plow a couple years later, can still remember the man still talking about the 1470 Demo when I delivered the 1370 to him and how he wished he had bought it when they were still making them, sorry enough rambling, as easy as the 1470 was for us to sell to the limited number of people that could justify or afford one for their farm it was not the main HP tractor we were selling as the Demostartor program instructed the dealer to order for us that was a 1070 as here 100hp tractors were our big seller's, 1030's before the "70" series came out, I can not remember the actual number of units the 1070 BK we had sold for us but around 10 comes to mind so for us the Demo program was a success, but then we always did Demo's from the time we started selling Case as the company promoted Demos heavily from day one and it worked as well as the lease to own program Case had but that is a story for another day, I hope all this typing was worth while and explained your question as I have almost forgot what it was with out going back to read it LOL, as Rod said my 1470 in the pic above was one of the already in stock tractors that was allowed to be decal and enrolled into the Demostrator program, as much as I would love to have a Black Knight 1470 tracor I am very glad to found this even more rare regular paint Black Knight sorry for the long winded post I am sure I have more than one out there grunbling again about my long posts oh well thats just me lol, to add one more thing if you look at the pic above and notice the decals of my 1470 date it as a 1970 (no cubes decal on the hood) this fact confirms what I am saying(this tractor was in dealer stock before the program was offered) as all Black Knight tractors had the cubes listed on the hood panel Golden Demos did not and the special program I talk about above was not done in the Golden Demo program to my knowlage cnt

KEEP IT COMING !...shame on them if that dont want to read all the neat stories direct from the men who lived and breathed it...I ALWAYS READ , but lately seldom respond unless i have time , or must be said to correct somethin ,,.. my typin skills are hunt and peck

Hi Nutty, I do appreciate they time you put into your answer. It's that kind of info we all like to know. As for my tractor with a tag and no decals what are your thoughts? It was purchased with 0 hrs. Had it been ordered as a Demo just for a costomer? I could never put in a post as long as yours. Twice since joining this forum, after typing my message and inserting a photo the page will expire before I get it posted. This is no kidding, then I have to start all over and try to type a little bit faster, LOL, Rod.

Rod my guess was that yours was one of the in stock units that was allowed to be moved into the Demo program, as to the O hrs yes some dealers "fudged" on the paper work and sold them that way I do remember our territory man speaking of such things, heck Case was selling tractors so they did not fight it too much, I do know at the time for us any way it was tough having to many units on lot as they would come due and paying intrest on them hurt badly, funny thing about our 1070 BK although it sold tractors for us it had hrs on it and came due before we got it sold and ended up being transfered to MT to be sold,, I sure wish we had been able to keep it for use on our farm then and would have sold our 1030 but times just did not allow it,, have you gotten the build card for yours? it will not tell you much other than when and where shipped and with no BK decals/paint from the factory I would say it does not show any thing special on the card, but it is really nice to have the plaque to prove what it really is,, by the way did you say what model yours is? 1470? sorry if I missed it if you said cnt

Hi Rod,
We didnt have a Black Knight "1470",but we did have a "1070" Black Knight,and a gold one too,I dont know what happen to the gold one,the last I saw it,it was looking pretty rough,and seeing some rough use on a loader.
But the Black Knight,even thou on a loader still looks pretty good,still has the chrome muffler.My uncle owns it,and glad he does.I looked at it about a month ago,and it still has the brass tag above in it

Yes it is a 1470. You guys must have sold a lot of units. If my memory is correct, I recall most dealers around here only had 1 BK and that was ussually a 1070. Thanks again, Rod.

it's stories like these that the rest of us Case lovers need to be aware of.i really like to read them. Thanks, Bill