Mr Big Stuff: Claas Lexion 530 Combine

PHer Brett Fraser climbs aboard an 8.8-litre behemoth

This is 'blowing chaff', apparently...

It's got a basic list price north of £225,000, an 8.8-litre six-cylinder turbocharged motor producing 339bhp, its options list includes telematics, and it represents the very best in German engineering. And if dwarfs anything that the likes of Mercedes and Audi have in their arsenal: towers above them, literally...

On the other hand, a 13.7-ton Claas Lexion 530 combine harvester is not what you might call fast - on the open road a decently fit cyclist could overtake it, and while it's harvesting wheat, barley, beans or rape seed, you could walk quicker. But what the Claas lacks in outright pace, it sure makes up for in immense and overwhelming presence.

£225k start price, and lots of 'presence'

Country motorists might curse getting stuck behind a combine during the harvest season, but if you're up there driving something this gargantuan, you feel king of the road. The Lexion 530 (now called the 630) isn't quite the biggest machine in the Claas line-up, yet its ability to occupy literally all of its allocated road space and then some of the other side's, coupled with its imposing front profile, mean that even artics give it respect and room.

On back roads its tyres overhang both sides of the tarmac: it really does own the road, and woe betide any car driver silly enough to attempt a face-off - there can only be one winner, and I guarantee it will be coloured green and grey.

Harvest time means no time to stop

Given that its tyres are considerably taller than the average man, you won't be surprised to learn that it's quite a hike to scale the ladder to the air-conditioned control room. Because the seals are tight to keep the dust endemic to harvest time at bay, it takes quite a slam to close the door behind you, but once in the air-sprung driver's seat, the view is spectacular. Think Docklands penthouse, but with a panorama of golden wheat rather than upmarket London. It's also worth asking for a quick squint at the engine bay, because it's right at the top of this beast and high enough to consider the deployment of Sherpas...

A fully automatic gearbox and light power-assisted steering make this giant piece of farm machinery as easy to punt along as a supermini, although rear-wheel steering can make it twitchy on-field and on-road. Simple driving dynamics are good news for the driver because he has so many other things to worry about: the height of the cutters, the length of the cutting deck, getting the balance right between vehicle speed and volume of grain collected; adjusting the combine's internals for the most efficient separation of grain and chaff - and so it goes on. Many of these functions are controlled via a joystick to your right, and there's a monitor of a complexity to make BMW's iDrive seem like a Fisher Price toy - sensors can even tell you the moisture content of the harvested grain and, via GPS, map out the variations throughout your field.

Mirror, signal, overtake...

Britain's unreliable weather means that once a combine gets going, the farmer doesn't want it to stop until everything's done - hence grain is off-loaded on the move. To ensure that every precious grain makes it into the trailer driving alongside, there's a camera and light on the boom to aid your aim. There's also a reversing camera, as all you can see behind you is dust.

When The Wurzels made a hit out of 'The Combine Harvester' they were taking the mick out of the farming community - the irony is that these days if you can afford a combine of the ilk of the Claas, then you're having the last laugh...

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nutter965

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