An Ontario foundry, a Brantford implement maker and a merger.

Massey Ferguson’s name joins two older businesses. English Wikipedia, citing Peter C. Newman’s 1982 history, says Daniel Massey set up the Newcastle Foundry and Machine Manufactory in what is now Newcastle, Ontario, in 1847, and that his son Hart Massey renamed it the Massey Manufacturing Co. The firm moved to Toronto in 1879, to a factory complex on King Street West that later became part of the Liberty Village district.

The other Canadian strand was the Harris family. The Canadian Encyclopedia, cited by Wikipedia, records that Alanson Harris bought a foundry near Beamsville, Ontario, in 1857 and used it to make farm implements; with his son John the business became A. Harris, Son and Company and moved to Brantford in 1872. In 1891 the Massey and Harris firms merged to form Massey-Harris Limited. Wikipedia says the merged company made threshing machines and reapers and, for a time, bicycles, and that during and after the Second World War it built tanks, self-propelled guns and military tractors under contracts for the United States armed forces.

The second half of the name arrived in 1953, when Massey-Harris merged with the Ferguson company of Northern Ireland. The merged business traded as Massey-Harris-Ferguson until 1958, when it shortened the name to Massey Ferguson, English Wikipedia says, again citing Newman. The company tried to bring the two dealer networks and product lines together, and its television and radio advertising of the period used a jingle with a male chorus singing “He’s a get-up-early, keep-’em-rollin’, Massey-Ferguson kind of a man,” according to the same article.

The Ferguson inheritance shows in the paint. English Wikipedia says the Ferguson 35, a Ferguson design of 1955 that became a Massey Ferguson model from December 1957, was nicknamed “Gold Belly” because of its gold-coloured engine and gearbox.

Toronto, Buffalo, Georgia — and France.

Through the 1960s the company was run from Toronto; English Wikipedia says the head office moved in the early 1960s from King Street to the Sun Life Tower on University Avenue. The business later took the name Varity Corporation, and Varity moved its head office to Buffalo, New York, the same article says. In 1986, Wikipedia adds, Varity spun off several divisions into a separate entity, Massey Combines Corporation, based in Brantford.

The present owner arrived in the 1990s. On 28 April 1994 The New York Times reported that the Agco Corporation, of Norcross, Georgia, had agreed to buy the Massey Ferguson Group, then a unit of Varity. The paper described Agco as formed in 1990 from the remains of the agricultural-equipment business of Allis-Chalmers, said Agco had acquired Massey Ferguson’s North American marketing and distribution operations the year before, and described Massey Ferguson as based in Warwickshire, England. AGCO has owned Massey Ferguson since 1994, and the brand sits in its portfolio alongside Valtra, which Farmers Weekly called Massey’s “sister brand” in 2020.

The brand’s centre of gravity has since moved to France. English Wikipedia says Massey Ferguson was based in Coventry and moved to Beauvais, north of Paris, in 2003 when the Coventry factory closed, and that row-crop tractors have been built at Beauvais since 1960. AGCO said in January 2020 that it would expand the Beauvais factory, where, it says, new Massey Ferguson models are designed, built and tested.

Production is spread beyond France. English Wikipedia says the AGCO plant at Jackson, Minnesota, began building Massey Ferguson tractors for the North American market in 2012, and it records earlier Massey Ferguson manufacturing in Argentina, after the purchase of local Hanomag facilities in 1971, and in Australia, after the purchase of the Sunshine harvester business of H. V. McKay in 1955. The article says manufacturing in Australia ended in 1986.

The model range has been renamed in recent years. Farmers Weekly reported in July 2020 that the 8S series replaced the top four tractors of the 7700 range and that the model numbers had been changed to denote engine power, making the tractors easier to identify; English Wikipedia lists the 5S, 6S, 7S, 3S and 9S series that followed.

Paint, decals and the dealer’s sign.

On farm and construction machinery, colour does a great deal of the identity work. A paint scheme carried across tractors, loaders and implements lets a machine be recognised across a field or a building site long before any badge can be read, and several equipment makers have treated their paint as a protected part of the brand, defending it as trade dress in the same way other companies defend a wordmark.

The decal is the second layer. Model numbers, wordmarks and stripes are usually applied as vinyl decals rather than cast badges, which is why restorers and collectors pay close attention to reproduction decal sets, and why a change of decal style often marks a new generation of machine as clearly as any change in the metal underneath.

Dealer signage carries the same identity to the roadside. Pole signs, fascia panels and branded service vans repeat the colours and wordmark at a scale meant to be read from a passing vehicle. Operator manuals, parts catalogues and safety labels then carry the typography and colour into the cab and the workshop, where the brand is read most often of all.

A 1958 mark, refreshed for 2022.

Massey Ferguson’s badge is the Triple Triangle. The Irish Farmers Journal reported on 15 December 2021 that the logo “has symbolised the brand since 1958,” the year the shorter company name was adopted, and that Massey Ferguson had given it an updated look to mark the brand’s 175th anniversary in 2022 — a count that runs from the Massey foundry of 1847. The company said the three overlapping triangles represent the relationship between farmers, dealers and the brand, and described the new design as a mix of its heritage and fresh brand values, the paper reported.

The redrawing came with a new line. Alongside the logo the company launched a “Born to Farm” identity. Francesco Murro of Massey Ferguson told the Irish Farmers Journal that the company had been thinking about a new logo since it unveiled the MF NEXT concept at the Agritechnica show in 2019, and that what it called “MF New Era” had begun with the launch of the 8S tractor in July 2020, and he listed a September 2021 “Born to Farm” digital event among the launches since. The paper reported that the new logo was already on the company’s digital channels and would be introduced gradually into factories, offices and dealer network signage in early 2022.

The 8S was itself a visible redesign. Farmers Weekly’s Edd Mowbray, writing on 28 July 2020, called it a “radically redesigned” range and “quirky-looking,” and reported that Massey Ferguson said it had started with “a blank canvas.” The article described a suspended cab set apart from the engine, a curved front screen that it likened to a combine’s, and a display screen mounted on the cab pillar in place of the old central dash.

For a design guide, Massey Ferguson shows how a machinery brand can carry one geometric mark from a 1950s merger into the era of cab touchscreens and app icons, updating its look while keeping the three triangles. Compare John Deere, whose leaping deer is the subject of another farm-machinery guide, and Case IH, another tractor brand in this round. For this guide we use a field red, an engine grey and ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Massey Ferguson’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.