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History of Deutz-Fahr forage harvesters
The history of Deutz-Fahr self-propelled forage harvesters began in the 1970s, when the company was expanding its range of forage harvesting equipment. The first major model was the FAHR SFH 3000, introduced in 1977. Developed in cooperation with the German manufacturer Mengele, it was powered by an air-cooled, eight-cylinder Deutz engine producing 214 hp. For the late 1970s, this made it one of the more powerful self-propelled forage harvesters available on the market.
Two years later, in 1979, the more powerful SFH 4000 was introduced. It featured an engine producing around 267 hp and represented a further stage in the cooperation between Deutz-Fahr and Mengele. One of the most distinctive features of these machines was their unusual wheel layout, with smaller wheels at the front and large driven wheels at the rear.
A far more ambitious project followed in 1982. The Deutz-Fahr SFH 4510 is regarded as the company’s first self-propelled forage harvester developed largely in-house. However, only a small number of pre-production machines were built, and the project never progressed to full-scale production. Deutz-Fahr ultimately concluded that further investment in this segment would not be sufficiently profitable.
During the second half of the 1980s, the company began scaling back its forage equipment operations. In 1988, KHD sold this part of the business to Greenland. This also marked Deutz-Fahr’s withdrawal from the self-propelled forage harvester market for several years.
The company returned in the mid-1990s with a far more ambitious machine. At Agritechnica in 1995, Deutz-Fahr unveiled the Deutz-Fahr Gigant 400. It was a large, modern forage harvester producing more than 400 hp and was developed jointly with LTS Landtechnik Schönebeck. Power came from a Deutz engine, while the chopping system was based on LTS technology.
The Gigant 400 produced around 408 hp. Its cutterhead measured 60 cm in width and 80 cm in diameter and was fitted with 12 diagonally arranged knives. The machine was intended to compete with the most powerful forage harvesters then offered by manufacturers such as CLAAS, New Holland and John Deere. Series production began in Schönebeck in 1996, although sales remained relatively limited.
Deutz-Fahr also planned a substantially more powerful successor. The Gigant 500 project featured an engine producing around 544 hp and a larger, 80 cm-wide cutterhead. Prototypes were tested in 1997 and 1998, but the Gigant 500 never entered series production and was never officially launched on the market.
Production of the Gigant 400 ultimately ended in 2000. With relatively few machines sold, continued development of an in-house forage harvester was no longer economically viable for the company. This also marked the end of self-propelled forage harvesters sold under the Deutz-Fahr name.
Although Deutz-Fahr never achieved a position in this segment comparable to CLAAS or John Deere, its forage harvesters remain some of the most interesting machines in the brand’s history. The SFH 4510 and Gigant 400, in particular, are now extremely rare and serve as reminders of two very different attempts by the German manufacturer to establish itself in the high-capacity self-propelled forage harvester market.