same here buddy, same here!!! long live the old orange tractors!!!
it still pisses me off everytime i read the agco advantage mag, that there is no more orange agco's. i would never buy a PHUCKING MF. i would rather go buy a damn old allis or a binder. never ever will you ever see me in a MF. yeah its the same tractor under the paint, but i like the orange, not the damn red. they say the MF name is wanted more over sea's. well this is over PHUCKIN sea's. i can tell you alot of the allis farmers around here are very very very pissed off. The orange tractors died off once in 85. now again in 2010. what a bunch of BS!!!
So, when were you looking to purchase your new AGCO tractor? What if the price was $10K higher than the same Red Massey Ferguson?
You can get pissed at me if you like, but the majority of people that are complaining about AGCO's decision are people that haven't bought a new tractor in 20 years. The people we deal with, the people BUYING iron, honestly care more about getting good service from us, than what color the tractor is. THAT, in our opinion, is the #1 thing we can do to sell iron...make sure we have good service!
FACT is, that if sales of the Orange tractors were good enough to bring the factory back over here, we could still paint them Orange. There is only one country in the world that sells AGCO Orange tractors, North America...and in that one country, there are only a handful of states where Orange is a real player.
So, out of 140 or so countries where AGCO sends machinery, you have this little spot of the world where people like Orange. Here in the Midwest, like Ohio and Wisconsin, AGCO is way bigger than MF....but on the world stage, NO ONE knows who Allis Chalmers was to even care about orange tractors...they might have seen their construction equipment, or power generation equipment, but most people outside of North America, and some isolated spots in Europe, have ever heard of AC tractors.
Now, here in NA, over 140hp, AGCO was selling more RT and DT series tractors than Challenger, and as many as MF...but under 140hp, AGCO was getting DESTROYED, to the tune of about 1500 tractors to MF's over 9000. It just didn't make sense financially. If you farmers that are "pissed off" would have ponied up and bought tractors, we probably wouldn't have had this problem.
Personally, to me, I don't like that the Orange is going away...but honestly, we're DAMN lucky it was here as long as it was. AGCO realistically should have done away with the White, AGCO Allis, and AGCO name back in 2000 when they created the AGCO branded tractors. They did talk about calling them AGCO, and painting them red, but again, globally, Massey Ferguson is the name that people know. 38 years of being the number 1 selling brand in the world will do that
Also, and just FYI, we bleed Orange...big time. We have better than 175 antique tractors in the barn, mostly Allis and the other AGCO brands, and a good many of them are VERY rare AC's that we have never seen another one like it, and we've been around a day or two
We decided when AGCO told us of their decision that we would be one of the last dealers with Orange tractors on our lot, and our customers really helped us with that in the last 6 months, ordering quite a few of them.
You won't find many people that the AC roots run as deep with....and ACFarmer and the rest of his family is like us too, right Derek?
Oh, and BTW...if you want a new Orange AGCO, the time to buy is now
Tier 3 engines instead of Tier 4i, good finance rates, some pretty decent delas to be had, and AGCO is giving you a 3rd year of Warranty for being a valued customer. Pretty good deal if you ask me
Chris