Coming up on 40 years old

Yes there is.

I remember being at an unofficial Dealer meeting just before the Deutz thing actually took place. There was a rumor that Kubota was also interested in buying the Allis-Chalmers farm equipment division. Many of us were hoping that would happen, as they had a line of smaller tractors and nothing over 100 HP for sure and maybe not over 60 or 70 HP at the time. They had a very small dealer network. Their color was ORANGE !!  A veteran dealer stood up and said " At this point we should hope ONE of them gets A-C bought out. Because if they don't, we are all finished."

And look where Kubota could be now, if they had latched on to the 8000 series, maybe even with their own engine !! The White driveline was fine, for a non-power shift transmission, but the 8000's as-is with a new engine for a couple three more years would have been better (I think) than the White chassis experiment.

Thanks Lynn for posting this! Solves a few mystery rumors over the years- just to think Allis had a big show in Vegas a few years earlier- then selling it all a few years later,,, tough to understand but it happened!

The 600 # Gorilla that was in the room was the upstairs gents at West Allis. They were in panic mode to save parts of AC - they got almost nothing from the industrial division - they got good money for the Ag division - but it was already spent. The ones who made the decision probably didn't know an 8000 from an 800 garden tractor. When the $ drain was so bad they could not plug it - the rats left the ship. No one ever said 'what if'. Yes there were better marriages in theory than the West Germans. But what did happen was some IH truckers and an old AC guy did form AGCO.  Us old AC guys also don't like the fact that if it were not for the Gleaner combine - the demise would have been a decade earlier. Gleaner was the cash cow for the Ag division- a fact the Gleaner plant guys always complained about. They wanted to go independent with Cummins engines but Milwaukee would not let them go. Also hindsight is a lot better than making decisions when one is up to ones butt in alligators.