The New Holland F156 is known mainly from surviving machines rather than from written sources: one stands in the Netherlands and is photographed on this page. It carries one of the company’s F numbers, a sequence used in parts of its equipment range. The sources used here describe the company and its products in general, not this model.
New Holland F156 at a glance
| Maker | New Holland |
|---|---|
| Numbering | an F number of the equipment range |
| Surviving example | photographed in Hoofddorp, the Netherlands |
| Company founded | 1895, as the New Holland Machine Company |
| Name from 1947 | Sperry New Holland |
| Name from 1986 | Ford New Holland |
| Single brand from 1996 | New Holland |
| Range today | tractors, combines, balers, forage harvesters, sprayers, seeders, grape harvesters |
| Technical data | not given in the sources used here |
| Film | the old video of this machine is no longer available |
The sources describe the company, not the F156, and the old video of this machine is dead; the article is built on the brand’s history and a preserved example.
History of the New Holland F156
A record kept by photographs
Not every machine of a large maker ends up in encyclopedias. The F156 survives as an object: a preserved example photographed in Hoofddorp in the Netherlands, which is the only reliable evidence used on this page. Its number places it in a sequence rather than in the tractor ranges whose T numbers are familiar to farmers today; the sources used here do not say what the F numbers were applied to, and this page does not guess.
The company that made it
New Holland began in 1895 in a horse barn in Pennsylvania, building a feed mill and other equipment for local farmers, and was incorporated in 1903. It became Sperry New Holland in 1947, the year it introduced the haybine mower conditioner, a machine that cut and conditioned hay in one pass and stayed in production until 2023. Ford bought the company in 1986, Fiat took 80 per cent in 1991, and in 1996 the single New Holland name was launched at a convention in Orlando, Florida.
The range around the F numbers
What the company is documented to have built is a wide spread of farm equipment: tractors, combine harvesters, balers, forage harvesters, self-propelled sprayers, haying tools, seeding equipment, hobby tractors, utility vehicles and grape harvesters, made in 18 plants worldwide with six joint ventures in the Americas, Asia and the Middle East. A machine like the F156 was one item in that catalogue rather than a landmark model, which is why the written record is thin.
Design and features
- F numbering: part of a number sequence used in the equipment range.
- Surviving example: preserved and photographed in the Netherlands.
- Sperry-era heritage: built by the company that introduced the haybine in 1947.
- Wide maker: one machine among a catalogue that ran from feed mills to grape harvesters.
New Holland F156 versions
- New Holland F156: the machine described here.
- Other F-number machines: the rest of the sequence.
- New Holland tractors: the T-numbered range sold alongside the equipment line.
The company’s tractors are on the New Holland T series page and the construction machines on the New Holland RG page. More machines are in the New Holland section.
Sources
- New Holland Agriculture, English Wikipedia: founding, Sperry years, product range, plants
- New Holland, Dutch Wikipedia: company history and sites
