Comedian Patrick Kielty is set to explore the untold story of the 'Tractor Wars' between Harry Ferguson and Henry Ford in a new BBC film.
Airing on BBC One Northern Ireland on Tuesday 6 September at 10.40pm, will look into the agreement between the two men and how it led to a spectacular fall-out and multi-million dollar lawsuit.
In 1938 Ferguson and Ford, two former farm boys, shook hands on ‘a gentleman’s agreement’ with the ambition to change the agricultural world forever. Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and Harry Ferguson, the Ulster inventor agreed to mass produce an ingenious new tractor.
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Together they would mechanize the world of the struggling small farmer on an industrial scale and put an end to the depressed 1930s. It was a major triumph for Ferguson who had spent 20 years toiling on his designs, desperate to change the face of farming.
In a journey that takes him across Northern Ireland, England, Detroit and New York, presenter Patrick Kielty reveals the story of Harry Ferguson’s partnership with Henry Ford and the events that led to a $250 million lawsuit. It is a transatlantic story of farming, big business and a broken partnership.
In the film Patrick visits the house in Co Down where Harry Ferguson was born in 1884 and attempts to plough with horses in the same field that Ferguson did as a boy. In England, he is granted unique access to the Ferguson Family Museum and learns how Harry became a motor mechanic, a racing driver, an aviator and a world-renowned inventor. Patrick gets behind the wheel of several Ford and Ferguson tractors and drives around Abbotswood, the grand country estate in the Cotswolds, where Harry Ferguson lived in later life.
Following in Harry’s footsteps to the USA, Patrick visits Detroit and goes to the site of the world’s first assembly line where the Ford Model T was built. He also visits Fair Lane, the home of Henry Ford, where the famous handshake agreement took place, and the former site of Ferguson Park, the rival factory that Harry set up right on Ford’s doorstep.
His journey will take him to New York to examine the spectacular fall-out which led to a $251million lawsuit, a David v Goliath story of its time, gripping the press, including LIFE magazine, and the general public over five years.
Uncovering the men behind the myths, Patrick reveals the genius of two farm boys from different sides of the Atlantic, who went on to change the world of agriculture.
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