Harry Ferguson Mastered Tractors, but Couldn’t Tame Cars 1950 – ’80 | Season 3 – Episode 76
Wheels Oct 22, 2023
Although Harry Ferguson (1884 – 1960) from Dromore, County Down is world-famous for conquering the world of agriculture with his invention of the modern tractor, a lesser-known part of his engineering legacy is his work on four-wheel-drive systems and even more obscure was his foray into automobile design.
Our story begins not with harry Ferguson, but with racing driver Fred Dixon who in the 1930s had come up with an idea for a family-friendly car offering the utmost safety, complete with both four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering capabilities.
Harry Ferguson and Fred Dixon shared a love for motorsports and it was at Ferguson’s garage, where Dixon garaged his Ulster TT car, that the two of them hatched their plans for a family-safe car.
Our story now takes another step with the entry of Tony Rolt who employed Fred Dixon to work as a mechanic on his 1930s ERA racing car. After much discussion of shared ideas, the two men formed Dixon-Rolt Developments Ltd and began working on a four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering prototype named the “Crab”
Following an initial burst of enthusiastic effort, they soon recognised a significant design flaw in the four-wheel drive Crab, while it proved adept off-road, it was hampered by the inability to simultaneously steer and brake. The engineering solution proved to be highly complex and very costly and so an investor with deep pockets was urgently required.
Harry Ferguson now enters the story as in the early 1950s he was flush with cash having won a patent infringement case against the Ford Motor Company and had been awarded £9 million. Given his previous friendship from his Ulster TT days, Fred Dixon approached the wealthy Ferguson seeking capital investment. However, Ferguson went one step further than an investment and in 1950 bought them outright, renaming the company Harry Ferguson Research Ltd. (HFR)
The newly formed HFR Ltd found new premises and Aston Martin design engineer Claude Hill was head-hunted to work on the Crab.
With a healthy financial position, the newly established company proceeded to create a second prototype, with a pressed steel body, denoted as R2. This second prototype (after the Crab) featured a rear-mounted 4-cylinder Scotch Yoke engine. It is interesting to wonder at the decision to fit such an engine as it was deemed at the time to be costly to commercially produce and needlessly complex in its workings when other suitable powerplants were readily available.
Even with the new investment allowing research into complex engineering solutions it was soon found that their four-wheel drive system was failing to effectively manage wheelspin.
Harry Ferguson, who was nicknamed “the Mad Mechanic” responded to the issue in his typical bruff manner, “what’s wanted is a diff that diffs when it should diff and doesn’t diff when it shouldn’t.”
With these ‘clear orders’ from Ferguson, Claude Hill was tasked with finding an engineering solution and he did! His solution was for a mechanically operated centre differential that would engage when wheelspin was detected and disengage as soon as traction was re-established. And they gave this new engineering marvel a name, the “Ferguson Formula”.
Despite the design team successfully working though their engineering challenges, Fred Dixon was not a happy man and argued against Ferguson’s decision to move HFR onto the same premises at Coventry as the Ferguson tractor company. Shortly thereafter and unhappy at the decision, Fred Dixon left the company.
Moving HFR to Coventry was not just to avail of the R&D capabilities offered by the on-site tractor factory, Harry Ferguson was long-term planning his sales and marketing strategy for his new range of automobiles. While evolving his car designs, his intention was to provide the entire package to a prominent automobile manufacturer for production under a licensing agreement, mirroring the approach taken for the global manufacturing of tractors. However, at this early stage in the development of these cutting-edge cars no manufacturer was to be found to take on the manufacturing licenses.
Undeterred by this setback and still focussed on perfecting the new engineering technology the Coventry-based HFR team then directed their efforts to developing the R3 a four-wheel drive prototype with a Ferguson-designed flat-4 engine, enclosed in a fiberglass estate car body.
In 1954 Harry Ferguson was on the move again after he parted ways with Massey-Harris and was obliged to relocate HFR to a temporary home on an old airfield in Northamptonshire. The prototype team set to work once again and built another prototype/ research car named the R3F. They employed a platform chassis and roughly adapted the R2’s body to accommodate the wholly changed mechanical components. This car was registered as RPE 4, though later, incorrectly referred to as R4. While it was not pretty and mechanically was considered a bit rough, it was a car that could be used for research.
Another move for HFR came in 1956, this time back to Coventry with the construction of new purpose-built premises at Siskin Lane.
By 1959, having already constructed three prototype/ research cars, the HFR team was nearing the pinnacle of their design and in an effort to attract a major car manufacturer they engaged prolific designer Giovanni Michelotti to design an estate car body on the R3F platform chassis for the fourth generation Research Vehicle, the R4.
The following year, eager to prove the road-holding capabilities of the ‘Ferguson Formula’ all-wheel-drive system the team began work on the Ferguson-Climax Grand Prix car, the 1.5 litre P99. We previously featured this amazing car “Ferguson P99 first AWD F1 car | Season 1 – Episode 64 https://irelandmade.ie/ferguson-p99-first-awd-f1-car-season-1-episode-64/
Harry Ferguson did not witness the P99’s competition debut, as he passed away in 1960. The cars debut came at the 1961 Oulton Park Gold Cup race when Stirling Moss piloted the P99 and taking advantage of the damp conditions that favoured the ‘Ferguson Formula’ he secured a convincing victory as the inaugural and sole Grand Prix win achieved by a four-wheel-drive car.
The leadership of the company was then handed over to his son-in-law, Tony Sheldon who continued the development of the cars with the R5 estate car.
The team produced R5 estate cars equipped with a 2-litre overhead cam version of the flat-4 engine. One was the grey R5/1 car, which was later outfitted with a Paxton supercharger and the other was the blue R5/2 car.
Tony Sheldon deviated from Harry Ferguson’s initial blueprint, which entailed providing a comprehensive vehicle package. Instead, the company shifted its focus towards creating a range of systems that could be made available to automobile manufacturers for integration into their existing vehicles. Jensen was the sole manufacturer to embrace this opportunity, introducing the luxury 4WD Jensen FF (Ferguson Formula) as a small production run.
In 1969, GKN acquired the rights to mass-produce the Ferguson Formula 4WD systems and their first project was the Ford Capri with a 3-litre engine and FF 4-wheel-drive.
At the same time, displaying endless engineering inventiveness the HFR team came up with a more cost-effective and completely dependable control system for the centre differential, known as the Viscous Control (VC).
Unfortunately, due to internal company issues the GKN Ford Capri project encountered difficulties and Tony Sheldon, CEO of HFR decided to halt the research efforts. Shortly thereafter, in 1971, Harry Ferguson Research Ltd ceased operations.
Around the time of the closure of HFR and with approval from Tony Sheldon, FF Developments Ltd was established by Tony Rolt to further develop the 4WD drive systems.
However, it was not until the late 1970s, after nearly a decade of failure, that Tony Rolt was able to sell the Ferguson Formula incorporating the Viscous Control (VC) improvements to the American Motor Corporation (AMC) for their new all-wheel drive Eagle saloon car.
In 1980 the Eagle became the first mass-production saloon car to feature the Ferguson Formula continuous four-wheel drive. The Eagle arrived on the market only a few weeks ahead of the Audi Quattro.
Following the success of the AMC Eagle, Ford subsequently embraced the system for their Sierra and Scorpio 4×4 models. The Ferguson Formula four-wheel drive system was adopted by numerous global automakers, including Volvo, Audi, Subaru, Lamborghini and Volkswagen.
Information sources and photo credits:
Belfast Local History Magazine
Britain By Car
Coachbuild.com
Coventry Telegraph
Coventry Telegraph
Engineering Stack Exchange
Evo.com
Farmcollector.com
Ferguson Club – Bill Munro & Duncan Russell
Ferguson Formula Facebook Page
GB Classic Cars
GKN Ford Capri – Courtesy Ford and Steve Saxty
gt6mk2.com
Hagerty
HandH
MotorMagazine.com
PALBO46
Philpottford.com
Skyline Tutorials
The Jensen Museum
Traction for Sale: The Story of Ferguson Formula Four-wheel Drive – Bill Munro & Pat Nigel Turner
Macs Motor City
Bluestone garage
