The Tractor That Bankrupted An Entire Company

The Oliver 1855 was supposed to be a workhorse. Instead, it became a symbol of everything that went wrong with one of America's oldest tractor manufacturers.

In 1855, James Oliver bought into a small foundry in South Bend, Indiana. His revolutionary chilled plow design made him famous — Oliver became known as the "Plowmakers to the World." After the 1929 merger with Hart-Parr, Nichols & Shepard, and American Seeding Machine Company, Oliver became a full-line farm equipment manufacturer producing thousands of tractors annually.

Then came the 55 series in 1969. The Oliver 1855 featured a turbocharged Waukesha 310 engine that was supposed to deliver 92 horsepower. But the turbocharger created a fatal problem: it overheated the motor oil. When the oil failed, wrist pins shattered. Connecting rods punched through engine blocks. Farmers watched their brand-new tractors destroy themselves from the inside out.

This is the story of how one engine problem helped end a company that had been building farm equipment since before the Civil War.