Just as Henry Ford II disliked Ferguson’s exclusive rights to market the 9/2N in the US, so Ferguson was equally incensed that Ford US did not pressurize Ford UK to sell tractors with his system in Europe (they still sold the antiquated EN27 Major). He saw this as a wasted opportunity and was anxious to do something about it.
Ferguson had managed to acquire a full set of the 2N tractor manufacturing drawings and these became the blueprints for a tractor to be produced under his own name; the Ferguson TE(O)20. These were unashamedly Ford Ferguson 2N clones albeit with a different engine and of course the horizontal grill bars in place of the 2N’s vertical ones (the original 9N was designed with horizontal bars).
In England over half a million Ferguson TE (Tractor England) 20 tractors rolled off the Banner Lane production line between 1946 and 1956. These were to be produced at an obsolete WWII aero engine factory then run by Sir John Black of the Standard Motor Company. The British Labour government had in-fact brokered the deal with Black for the Banner Lane Factory in Coventry and had guaranteed the supply of scarce raw materials.
Harry Ferguson was a brilliant publicist and throughout his life had drawn attention to himself, and his products, with a series of stunts, like the time he drove a TE20 Tractor, complete with cultivator, around the ballroom and down the staircase at Claridges Hotel in London (see photo below). Outside of the US the take up of tractors had been slow and this gave Ferguson an open market. The Ford Company, or that is the Fordson Company of Great Britain, was still making primitive tractors like the EN27 Major. They had not imported, or produced, the 9N, 2N or 8N. Dagenham operated independently from Dearborn and liked it that way. From 1946 until 1957 Harry Ferguson had the UK small tractor field to himself (sales reached 78.4% by 1949) and nothing could seem to compete with the Grey Fergie. A complete range of implements was designed to compliment the TE20 and a diesel version was introduced along side the TVO model. A school was set up at Stoneleigh Abbey near Coventry and training was given to overseas visitors. As farming became mechanized Fordson could not compete and with the help of a well-planned marketing strategy the TE20 became the most popular tractor in the UK and by the mid-1950’s it was outselling Fordson on such a scale that it was Fordson’s own salesmen that called them the ‘Grey Menace’.
In 1947 the post war UK economy needed export income and many TE20’s models produced at Banner Lane were sent to the US to fill the gap left when the supply from Ford’s was cut off. Harry Ferguson eventually purchased a factory site in Detroit Michigan and US production of the Ferguson TO20 (Tractor Overseas) began in October 1948.
Much against his better judgment, Harry Ferguson yielded to pressure and oversaw the design of a larger TE(O) 20 during the 1950's . This model became the TE(O) 30 and eventually was re-modeled the FE35 and then the MF 35 after the Massey-Ferguson-Harris Company became Massey Ferguson. The MF 35 and then the MF 35X became the MF 135 in the mid 1960’s.
