My name is Bob Christie I run the Willys reunion show. This is my wife's 1947 empire tractor uh named Rena after her grandmother. We bought this from a guy that pulled it out of a barn in Berryville, New York where it sat for 30 years. I spent a winter redoing the brakes, the transmission, transfer case, some of the motor on this and pulled it in September, pulled it out in April running. And we left it in just exactly the shape that it's in.
This has the L-head in it right?
It has a Willys L-head in it, Willys transfer case, transmission, pto, steering, differential, and a few other random parts um- it's a mismatch a mishmash of world war II parts left over. Made in 1947 in Philadelphia. I made this- the steps, added a second seat to it so we could run tractor parades with it.
It's pretty cool. You use it at the farm?
I give it light duty on the farm uh, it has a love three-point hitches for the first three-point hitches that Jeeps had on them. A pretty rudimentary thing. Um at a time when Ford nine ends were the tractor to buy, these cost about the same but they sadly were poor performers compared to a nine end. Not quite as strong, weight in the wrong spots, way more horsepower though. So a lot of guys use them for belt work.
How many of these are out there?
A little over 400 of them uh throughout the world. A lot of them got shipped to South Africa. A lot of them got shipped um South America. There's about maybe 15 of them in the world with a factory three-point hitch.
Oh wow!
Yeah we were very lucky. I found it on Facebook marketplace of all things. I know right. It popped up one day, my wife and I were discussing buying a tractor across the street from us, it was a Worthington which was a Ford kind of an offshoot of a Ford. And because we were looking for one of these for five years and um this one just popped up the next day we were going to look at that Worthington and Mindy said let's wait for an Empire. This popped up the next day, so we paid 1500 for it which was a steal. But they are- they're very rare but it was in pretty bad shape.
Well it looks good.
When we go to Empire shows it's funny because there'll be 25-30 Empires that are all painted, and ours looks like this you know? I like it that way, I just think it's- I don't know.
It's just- it's time period correct!
Well it's that and I think it makes people's imaginations spark a little more when they see something like this. Yeah, it's got stories to tell.
Awesome tractor! Thanks Bob.
Yeah man.
