Saturday 14th November 2015

Swords into ploughshares for Pininfarina

It's powerful, it's red, it's got styling by Pininfarina and really, really big wheels!

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"Pininfarina's new design shifts Zetor to a more intense, emotional experience that is highly sensual, dynamic and modern," starts the press release. Ooh, what's this then? A new coachbuilt supercar? "The idea behind the Zetor by Pininfarina concept is the embodiment of a perfect combination of power, dynamics and emotion," it continues, teasingly.

The red ones are faster

But this isn't a new coachbuilt supercar. It is, as you'll have gathered, a tractor. A Pininfarina designed tractor at that. But still a tractor.

Nothing wrong with that and as Bertone folds we know times are tough for the Italian styling houses. Supercars and tractors have a celebrated history too of course, Porsche once having a sideline in agricultural machinery and some bloke called Lamborghini funding a supercar start-up off the back of his tractor business.

Design that "communicates emotion and passion" is perhaps something new for the farm machinery business though, Pininfarina Chief Creative Officer Fabio Filippini promising this and more for a new corporate styling language for the Czech tractor builder's range. The tractor is being displayed at the Agritechnica show in Hannover, an event we've never heard of but - to our inner three-year-olds at least - one that sounds rather fun if it involves sitting in lots of brightly coloured farm machinery. We'll sort our press accreditation and offer a full show report next time it's on!

[RoverP6B]

I'd love PH to cover more agricultural stuff. I understand that radar-guided cruise control appeared on combine harvesters long before it found its way into an S-class... and as tractors go, this one looks pretty good! A lot bigger and more powerful than the wee grey Fergie I used to drive as a teenager in 1970s Perthshire...