The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Row 7 · Garden tractors
Lead: Garden tractors are the one branch of the trade where a small shop could plausibly have started in a garage — so the test was run on this ground specifically, and it returns the same answer with a famous name on the boundary. Wheel Horse, the garden-tractor marque a searcher is most likely to misassign, is South Bend's whole: the business began in 1946 in Elmer Pond's two-car garage in South Bend, building two-wheel "Walk-Away" garden tractors sold under the Pond name before a naming conflict made it Wheel Horse; Cecil Pond carried it to a full line of lawn and garden tractors, a plant at 515 W. Ireland Road in South Bend, sale to American Motors on May 24, 1974, and sale to Toro in mid-August 1986 for $8 million, the name surviving in production until 2007. Every one of those coordinates is South Bend. For New Carlisle itself, TractorData's 97-maker lawn-and-garden register and the marque literature return no garden-tractor works, no riding-mower shop and no Pond-style garage start in the town or township. The exception does not except: no garden tractor was built on this ground either.
Sources:
- Wheel Horse company record: founded 1946, Elmer Pond's garage, South Bend, Indiana; headquarters South Bend; AMC acquisition May 24, 1974; Toro purchase August 1986, $8 million; name eliminated after 2007.
- TractorData.com lawn-and-garden database (97 manufacturers) — no New Carlisle, Indiana maker.