Tractor livery colours, dated

What colour was a tractor in a given year?

That is the only form the question can take. A make on its own does not have a colour: a Ford of 1955 is red and a Ford of 1975 is blue, a Ferguson TE-20 is grey and a 1982 Massey Ferguson is red, and each pair sits under one brand. So every row below is a make and a period, and where two periods both cover a year the narrower one wins.

The swatches are an indication of the colour family, not a paint match. We withhold paint codes: a RAL number from a club page, a part number out of a restoration supplier's catalogue. Those belong to whoever compiled them, and several of those suppliers' terms forbid copying their content outright.

Each row names the work the period was dated from, not a quotation from it. Our own working notes quote their sources, often in German or Italian, and a quotation is the source's prose rather than a fact about a tractor — so the notes stay in our records and the page cites the work. Where a period boundary is our reading rather than a date a source states, the row says so.

Every dated livery period

Sorted by make. The chassis colour is what the wheels, axles and running gear take; where no source states one it is dark grey. Confidence is our own reading of how firmly the source dates the change.

Where we could not establish a livery

18 makes or periods where we looked and did not find an answer we could stand behind. These are not gaps waiting to be filled with a guess: they are recorded findings, and they stop the question being reopened. Each is given the reason that applies to it, from a fixed set: the manufacturer let the buyer choose; the sources disagree inside a single period; we searched and no sentence dates a livery; or the period is a transition no source dates within it.

• Allgaier · all years2 models on this site have no picture because of this

  we searched the marque and model articles and found no sentence that dates a livery for this period

• Bührer · all years10 models on this site have no picture because of this

  we searched the marque and model articles and found no sentence that dates a livery for this period

• Dexheimer · all years3 models on this site have no picture because of this

  we searched the marque and model articles and found no sentence that dates a livery for this period

• Eicher · 1948–19532 models on this site have no picture because of this

  we searched the marque and model articles and found no sentence that dates a livery for this period

• Fahr · 1938–19452 models on this site have no picture because of this

  the sources disagree within this period, and two colours in one period is not a livery

• Güldner · 1937–195710 models on this site have no picture because of this

  no single livery could be established for this make and period

• Güldner · 1963–196813 models on this site have no picture because of this

  no single livery could be established for this make and period

• Hanomag · all years18 models on this site have no picture because of this

  we searched the marque and model articles and found no sentence that dates a livery for this period

• HELA · all years5 models on this site have no picture because of this

  we searched the marque and model articles and found no sentence that dates a livery for this period

• Hermann Lanz · all years13 models on this site have no picture because of this

  recorded as a decision after a search, rather than as an absence of sources

• Hürlimann · 1959–19667 models on this site have no picture because of this

  the manufacturer let the buyer choose the colour, so there is no single livery to state

• IMT · all years13 models on this site have no picture because of this

  we searched the marque and model articles and found no sentence that dates a livery for this period

• Lamborghini · 1997–200117 models on this site have no picture because of this

  the period is a transition between two liveries that no source dates within it

• MAN · all years17 models on this site have no picture because of this

  we searched the marque and model articles and found no sentence that dates a livery for this period

• SAME · 1952–19592 models on this site have no picture because of this

  the period is a transition between two liveries that no source dates within it

• Steyr · 1955–196610 models on this site have no picture because of this

  the sources disagree within this period, and two colours in one period is not a livery

• URSUS · all years33 models on this site have no picture because of this

  we searched the marque and model articles and found no sentence that dates a livery for this period

• UTB · all years21 models on this site have no picture because of this

  no single livery could be established for this make and period

Which makes are missing from this table?

27 makes with pages on this site have no colour record at all — not a colour, not even a recorded absence. Nobody has worked them yet. They are listed here rather than left to be noticed, because a make in this list is a make whose tractors have no picture on this site.

3009 of our 3232 published tractors belong to a make with at least one dated livery period. The rest are in the list below.

• OLIVER 19 models
• Nuffield 14 models
• Warchalowski 13 models
• Leyland 10 models
• IMR-RAKOVICA 3 models
• New Holland-Fiat 3 models
• RÖHR 3 models
• WARCHALOWSKI-MC CORMICK 3 models
• UZINA TRACTORUL 2 models
• Aebi 1 model
• Brandenburger Traktorenwerke 1 model
• County 1 model
• Daimler-Benz 1 model
• Deuliewag 1 model
• Doppstadt 1 model
• Ensinger Fahrzeugbau Michelstadt 1 model
• Fordson County 1 model
• Hermann Zanker KG 1 model
• J. Bautz AG 1 model
• Josef Krümpel 1 model
• MAN Werk München 1 model
• Massey-Harris-Ferguson 1 model
• Primus 1 model
• U.T.B SR Rumänien 1 model
• Wolfenbütteler Traktoren GmbH 1 model
• Yanmar 1 model
• Zickler 1 model

Why entries get withdrawn, and what that costs

This table changes when a better source turns up, and when it changes we take the consequences rather than keep the number. A restoration paint supplier's "SAME orange" was withdrawn when a marque history dated the change to red at the end of the 1950s; a Lamborghini entry that put the marque in silver from 1996 was withdrawn when it turned out the 1996 date belonged to one range and not to the marque.

Both withdrawals took pictures with them. Every illustration that had been generated under a withdrawn entry was withdrawn in the same change — about ninety machines in the first case and fifteen in the second — and the pages they were on went back to having no picture. Money already spent is never a reason to keep something whose basis has gone. It is also why a paint catalogue no longer outranks a documented marque history here.

Where a period boundary is our reading rather than something a source states, the row says so in those words. It is recorded as judgement and never as a sourced fact.

What this table is for

It decides the colour of the illustrations on this site. A make and year with no entry gets no illustration at all: the page says there is no photograph and invites one, rather than showing a machine in a colour we guessed. An invented colour is the same kind of error as an invented engine figure, and a reader cannot tell a lucky guess from a sourced fact.

No illustration here or anywhere on the site carries a manufacturer's badge, wordmark, model lettering or number plate, and none is presented as a photograph. Several of these colour combinations are registered trademarks in their own right. How we source and check figures sets out the rest.

Colour counts across the 75 dated periods: red (26), green (12), orange (7), grey (6), blue (5), light green (4), yellow (4), white (3), dark green (2), silver (2), terracotta (2), pale green (1), tan (1).