Also in my garage
This farmer-turned-writer realised his childhood dream – via his set of tractors
If only a young Stuart Gibbard could see himself now. It started with dashed dreams of being a motoring writer, then ideas as a young teenager of owning a Spitfire while pining for an Aston Martin DBS, and eventually resulted in him becoming an authority on David Brown tractors.
“They suggested I went to agricultural college because my father was a farmer,” he says of his career advice from school. “And if I still wanted to write I could write about farming things. But I discovered young farmers and alcohol and never went. Being the eldest it was decided that I ran the family farm, and my wife saw an advert in Farmers Weekly for journalists. I applied and had an intensive week of being lectured; at the end I was sent off for work experience at a dairy farming magazine. I knew nothing about cows, but it was with Farming Press, which had a book department, and they came to me and said: ‘You’ve been talking about tractors all week, how would you like to write for us.’”
He’d been collecting them, too, with vintage examples filling the shed at his Lincolnshire home. It has since been whittled down to just two, both DBS because his affinity with Brown is so strong. He even has his old chair.
“He was always aware of not being very tall,” explains Gibbard, “and being very young he didn’t want his authority to be challenged so he had this chair made by Waring & Gillow with risers in the legs, so when he was sitting at the boardroom table he was at the same level as everyone else. In 2013 I was told the chair was up for sale at an antiques dealer in Huddersfield and we drove up to buy it the day after Boxing Day.”
Brown is also the reason for the trimming of the collection. Gibbard’s writing career blossomed to publish numerous books, and writing about cars and Land-rovers as well as tractors. “In 2003 the publisher said that it was time we did David Brown,” he recalls, “and I was fascinated by the firm and its history. I became friends with Adam Brown, Sir David’s grandson, and he asked me to write his grandfather’s biography, so during lockdown I started that.
“Being involved with David Brown brought me back to my love of Aston Martins. I had accumulated a collection of vintage tractors, and when my wife said she wanted to go to IKEA in Milton Keynes I said: ‘Well you might, but I don’t. But if we’re going to Milton Keynes, we’re going to Newport Pagnell.’ I’d never been. Luckily they weren’t open because it was a Sunday, but I came away and said I’d love an Aston Martin. She said, ‘Well, you’ve got that shed of tractors that you do nothing with, why don’t you sell them and buy an Aston Martin.’ So I did. I sold half the tractors, and enjoyed it so much I sold the other half to buy Sue a DB9.”
Now the petrol-paraffin Super Cropmaster, a development model with a ‘traction control unit’, and diesel 25D are joined by a Vantage, all the colour of Brown’s jacket, Hunting Pink. The Cropmaster was bought from Gibbard’s colourblind neighbour, who needed an orange vehicle, and the 25D was sourced for a voiceover artist friend who then recently needed to free up space – “He must be one of the few in London who owns a tractor and combine harvester!
“Brown hired Vauxhall’s chief engineer Alex Taub and he worked with DB’S engineers, and the engine is a four-cylinder version of a sixcylinder Bedford truck unit if you look closely. They’re extremely easy to maintain – much easier and cheaper than a Vantage!”