The garden-tractor test: forty years of garden tractors — in South Bend

THE WHEEL HORSE PATTERN, TESTED · 1946–1986 AND AFTER

The garden-tractor exception exists in this county — and it is South Bend's whole, which is exactly why it must be tested here and then handed over: Wheel Horse, the marque the checklist's pattern names, was founded in 1946 in Elmer Pond's two-car garage in South Bend, building two-wheel self-propelled "Walk-Away" garden tractors from angle iron and surplus parts; Elmer's son Cecil Elwood Pond (born in South Bend, June 4, 1924) joined and drove the line — the first four-wheel tractor in the late 1940s, sales past a million dollars by 1957, a plant on West Ireland Road occupied in 1961, some 500 employees at the sale to American Motors (May 23–24, 1974; the sources print both the signing year 1974 and a 1975 closing in different tellings — the conflict stands), sale to Toro in 1986, and the Wheel Horse name carried on Toro-built machines until it was eliminated from production after 2007. Forty years of garden tractors built in this county: the pattern, satisfied whole — one city west of this ground's line.

For the CDP itself the test is empty, and the searches are the evidence. The Pond family's whole diaspora is accounted for in the trade record and none of it lands in Clay or Harris township: Harold Pond's Speedex line at Ravenna, Ohio (from 1935); Elmer and Cecil's Wheel Horse at South Bend; Glen Heilman's line, carried in the next article, placed by its sources in Mishawaka and in Liberty. No garden-tractor maker — Pond-family or any other — is seated in Granger, in the marque registers, in TractorData's 97-maker lawn-and-garden index, or in the directories, in any record reached. The suburb that Wheel Horse's little tractors were built to mow bought them; it never built them. TESTED NEGATIVE for this ground; the manufacture itself prints as manufacture in South Bend's build, where it belongs.

Sources:

1. Wheel Horse record — founding 1946, South Bend headquarters, Cecil Pond; American Motors acquisition May 24, 1974; Toro purchase August 1986; name eliminated after 2007.
2. Farm Collector, "Wheel Horse Garden Tractor: The Horse of a Different Color" (December 2005) — the South Bend garage start; the May 23, 1974 sale to American Motors; the January 14, 1982 investment-group sale; Toro, 1986.
3. Wheel Horse forum/company-history record — the 515 W. Ireland Road plant, constructed 1961.
4. Gas Engine Magazine, "The History of Speedex" (April 2001) — Harold, Elmer and Cecil Pond and Glen Heilman, all formerly of Shaw Manufacturing, Galesburg, Kansas; the three lines' seats (Ravenna; South Bend; and Heilman's, next article).
5. TractorData, lawn-and-garden tractor manufacturer index (97 makers) — no maker seated in Granger.