29/07/2026
It is now 50 years since the very first Ford Q cab tractors started to appear on farms, following the dealer/press launch on 21 May 1976. Here, customers and employees of Ford dealer, Mann Egerton of Ipswich, can be seen in the company of a Q-cabbed Ford 4600.
One of the dealership's salesmen, the legendary and sadly now late Frank Sherman, second from left, experienced considerable success selling Q-cab Fords.
The date of when he sold his first 600 Series model is not known, but he retailed his first 700 Series machine, a 7700, in December 1976 to a customer in Suffolk for £8575, with a 1972 Ford 7000 being taken in part-exchange. A couple of months later a Ford 6700 went to a local farm for £8573. Prices were creeping up and in May 1977, Frank sold a Ford 7600 for £8220 and a Ford 7700 for £10,648, while a Muir-Hill 121 Series II with a Q cab had reached £15,438. Among his other sales around this time were an Armer Salmon 3-in-1 sugar beet harvester (£6072), a Ransomes C92 heavy-duty cultivator (£1188), a Ransomes Nordsten cultivator drill (£1368) and a set of Bettinson Molefit dual wheels (£240).
The following is a list of the new Ford tractors that Frank, who passed away in March 2023, aged 93, sold for Mann Egerton in 1977.
MODEL SALES
Ford 3600 1
Ford 4600 12
Ford 5600 3
Ford 6600 14
Ford 6700 1
Ford 7600 3
Ford 7700 6
Muir-Hill 121 3
TOTAL 43
NOTE: No AI was used to compile this post, just good old fashioned research of the type found in every issue of CLASSIC TRACTOR!
