That company (Case) has sure had its share of mergers over the past 60 years ... and this is just an excerpt. The company is now majority-owned by Fiat Industrial S.p.A.!
Quote:
In 1957, Case bought out the American Tractor Corporation (ATC). ATC was founded in 1950 and was a producer of small crawler tractors. Their production of dozers (marketed as Terradozers) and development of an integrated backhoe was of particular interest to Case. Case dropped the ATC name in 1959 only retaining the Terratrac name for the drive trains. This led to a hybrid tractor being rolled out of the Burlington Plant in 1957. This model, the 320 Construction King, would become synonymous in the United States to the name backhoe loader
In 1972, Case bought the British tractor builder David Brown Ltd.
In 1984, Case parent Tenneco bought selected assets of the International Harvester agriculture division and merged it with J.I. Case. All agriculture products are first labeled Case International and later Case IH. They used the 94 Series CASE Utility, 2WD's and 4wd's for CaseIH's first tractor together as a company. But Case IH's REAL first tractor was the Magnum introduced In 1987 the Magnum was produced and the 94 series line was dropped.
When Case IH bought out Steiger in 1986 they also chose the Steiger models. And they still do in the Steiger name.
In 1996 Austrian tractor builder Steyr Tractor was purchased.
The Case Corporation joined with New Holland N.V. to become CNH, now CNH Global, in November 1999. Because of the merger, CNH was forced to release its production plants in Doncaster, England and Winnipeg, Canada. The Doncaster site was bought by the ARGO-group, owner of tractor builder Landini, and brought back the McCormick brand. The plant in Winnipeg was taken over by the Buhler family to start Buhler Tractors.
In Europe the merger with New Holland (including the former Fordson and Fiat tractor lines) was the success Case IH expected. In 2006 Case IH came with a plan to bring back the "International" feel to their products. They brought back the old International Harvester logo, and made more technical difference between the two brands. Montgomery Design International redesigned several products.
...and to think that I learned all of this trivia because of just one postage stamp!
Posted 06/14/2011 4:46 pm
