REVIEW
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kings of the class A first glance at the impressive Axion 900 and Xerion 5000 series tractors from Claas left us seriously impressed. Harrison Hunkin reports
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laas has enjoyed its fair share of machinery innovations over the years. The early Claas combine harvesters changed the game in Europe. Then, you have the company’s core forage equipment and Jaguar forage harvesters. Today, half of all foragers sold globally are Jaguars. Somehow, despite all this pedigree and innovation, we tend to neglect or forget about Claas when talking about the big players in the agricultural machinery world (John Deere, AGCO, CNH). Perhaps it’s because Claas is relatively new to the tractor game, and tractors are the measuring stick when talking about machinery. Or, is it because this industrious German family-run company is overshadowed its bigger competitors? Either way, it is now
FIRST GLANCE Rewinding to back before the COVID pandemic, we spent the day with the Claas Axion 960TT and the Xerion 5000TS at a Claas facility in Germany. At that stage, the Xerion 5000TS was
merely a concept and yet to be released to the world, while the Axion 960, featuring the new Terra Trac system, had just received a substantial global launch at the Agritechnica trade fair. Naturally, our eyes were initially drawn to the Axion 960 and the Terra Trac, a flat ‘half-track’ system that had been trialled on the Lexion and Jaguar harvesters, now punched onto the rear of the company’s flagship Axion tractor. It was an impressive tractor to look at. At first glance, it’s clear the Terra Trac system is intended to act almost like a hybrid between a wheeled tractor and traditional tracked tractors. It provides the comfort of a wheeled machine and the flexibility in variable soil conditions that you get with a traditional tracked machine. Claas claims you get 15 per cent more traction and 50 per cent less ground pressure with Terra Trac. And that’s the beauty of this fully suspended flat track style system – it rides like silk, which is amazing compared to regular tracked machines. Normal tracked systems can be a
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$39,600
TA1077814
CLAAS 574 ANTARES. 105hp with 6T side tipper cane bin, 1,300 hrs use. • QLD 07 3073 8079
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TA1059155
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8/04/2021 3:27:46 PM
