1959 Porsche Tractor For The Collector Who Wants Everything

Tractor manufacturing is a domain that benefited not only from Lamborghini’s expertise, but from Porsche’s too, which began constructing prototypes of the farm-aimed vehicles prior to WW2.

The earliest batches were powered by petrol engines, but later ones turned to diesel power and used two-, three- and four-cylinder air-cooled engines, with outputs ranging between 14 and 55 horses.

Things were looking good for Dr. Ferdinand Porsche’s tractor manufacturing business, but at the end of the war, he was banned from producing such vehicles, as only firms that had been making tractors prior to and during the war were permitted to continue.

Porsche was then forced to license the designs to other manufacturers, and papers were eventually signed with Germany’s Allgaier GmbH and Austria’s Hofherr Schrantz. In 1954, Mannesmann AG diversified its business into tractor manufacturing by buying the rights to Porsche’s engine and Allgaier’s tractor design, setting up Porsche-Diesel Motorenbau GmbH.

Two years later, Mannesmann opened a production facility in Friedrichshafen-Manzell, at an old Zeppelin factory, where assembly of four models began: the 14 HP Junior, 25 HP Standard, 38 HP Super and 50 HP Master. Between 1956 and 1963, Porsche-Diesel Motorenbau produced more than 125,000 tractors, many of which were aimed at other markets.

This particular 308 Super was put together in 1959 and it was discovered at a farm near Dublin, Ireland, in 2014, where it sat on a field for several years. It was then taken to a vintage tractor expert, who returned it to its former glory in a proper restoration process, during which it received a red and cream finish and had its four-stroke, 2,466cc 3-cylinder, air-cooled diesel engine properly serviced.

Responsible for selling it at an estimated £10,000-£15,000 ($13,270-$19,905) is SilverstoneAuctions, which says that the Porsche tractor was never registered for the road, but since it comes with the correct chassis plate, registration should not be a problem. It will go under the hammer on October 15, at ‘The Porsche Sale 2016’, at The Wing, Silverstone Circuit, in Northamptonshire.