Some history books say that the stance and style of old tractors were the inspiration for the first hot rods. Mostly fenderless, big tire stagger, open-air freedom. It’s not a Deuce roadster, but it’s every bit as much a hot rod. And it’s black, the way Henry Ford would have wanted it. Photo from dieselpowerproducts.com.
This tractor was on display at SEMA in the Jamo Performance Exhaust booth, a company that I have literally never heard of. Never in my life have I gone into something so blindly simply because I like what they did for a show that I never attended, but here we are. Jamo Performance Exhaust is a company started by a couple of guys who grew up in Hawaii but chose to start their business on the mainland in Las Vegas. The way their logo looks, I would have guessed Canadian, but not even close.
Imagine spending your whole life living in two places that most people go to vacation? Wild.
Anyways, this tractor is a testament to the fact that you don’t need to showcase your parts on some plain old Camaro, tri-five Chevy, or big crew cab diesel. Heck, this tractor doesn’t even seem to showcase many parts, as the exhaust is nothing more than a mandrel-bent elbow coming out of each turbo, but that doesn’t matter at SEMA, as it’s all about getting the brand some coverage. From the number of pictures I’ve seen of this thing, it worked.
I don’t know the average number of tractors at SEMA each year, but I’d bet it’s less than one. This Ford 8N pictured here might be the first farm tractor on the show floor in history, for all I know. Rolling out of the factory in 1948 with an engine roughly two-litres and twenty-five horsepower strong, anybody and everybody knows those numbers aren’t going to cut it at SEMA. Brian Rogers instead swapped in a 7.3 Powerstroke with a pair of turbos poking out each side of the hood. As I’ve said, I know very little about diesels, but from what I can tell, a 7.3 makes ten times the horsepower and five times the torque of the stock 8N, and that’s before the turbos. All that power feeds to the back tires through the stock transmission and rear differential, so I’m assuming that the driver would have to take it easy on the throttle with this one. There’s also a nitrous bottle hanging off the bottom, because why not, right? The rear wheels are 28x16 from TIS with 48” Interco tires, while the smaller matching TIS front wheels are 20x10 with Toyo slicks. It sits quite perfectly, really, with the stance that a hot rod should have and enough obscurity to attract a crowd.
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