Jorma Ylikomi - Tractor trade and motorsports PRE-SALES UNTIL 31.10.2025

NEW IN PRE-SALE UNTIL 31.10.2025

Take advantage of the -10% pre-order discount, valid only until 31.5.2025!

This spring marks 60 years since Jorma Ylikomi opened the Ford tractor shop Ylikomi Oy in Tampere. His nephew Harri Ylikomi thought it was a good time to write a book about his uncle and the company. The timing is also perfect, as Ford Finland will be 100 years old in 2026.

Jorma's workshop was at the end of a barn building on his home farm in the village of Komi, Hämeenkyrö. In his younger days, Jorma used to repair cars, tractors and tillage machinery, such as ploughshare cutting wheels and blades. He used to go to the garage in the neighbouring village when necessary, because the people there didn't know how to repair, for example, military Harley-Davidson motorcycles. There was a great interest in different kinds of machines.

Inspired by speed, Jorma drove a grey Ferguson he had tuned on the road in his home village past a postal van at 60 km/h. When the postman stopped at the village shop, he asked the driver who it was. At the age of 17, in 1954, he bought a BSA A7 500 cc motorcycle. In 1956, the first TT race was held in Orivesi, where Jorma Ylikomi won the under 500 cc class at the age of 19 on his Norton Manx motorcycle.

In the 1950s and 1970s, Jorma Ylikomi competed on various vehicles: in TT races on British bikes (BSA, Triumph and Norton Manx), in 1949 on a Citroen and on a motorcycle in ice racing, on Tornado and Argo Thor motorboats and on a Ski-Doo snowmobile. There will also be accounts of the races in the book.

Jorma Ylikomi worked as a salesman from the 1950s to 1961 at Tammer Auto Oy, a sister company of Korpivaara Oy in Tampere, and from there he went to Tampere Hankkija, where he progressed to the position of sales manager. He heard that there was a vacancy for a district salesman for Ford tractors in Tampere, so he applied for it and received a letter from Ford of Finland in December 1964 that they were going to make a district sales contract for tractors with him. In 1965 he set up his own Ford tractor business, Ylikomi Oy. It was the first Ford shop in Finland to sell only tractors, not cars.

Ylikomi Oy's workshop and service trucks started operations on 12 April 1965, and the shop opened on 28 April 1965. Although sales were made even before the official opening of the shop, e.g. for Vammas excavators. The shop was first located on Suvantokatu and in 1968 moved to the premises of truck dealer Pekka Mäkinen on Vuolteenkatu, next to the bus station in Tampere. There were repair shops in Koivistonkylä and Rantatie. The shop's vehicles included Ford Trader swap-body trucks, which Harri's father Lauri Ylikomi used to deliver tractors etc. to customers, Ford Transit vans with full service equipment, which could be contacted by car radio if necessary, a 1965 Ford Mustang HT and a 1970 Ford Bronco. The shop sold Ford tractors, excavators (e.g. Vammas and ARA), Orasvuon machinery, forestry tractors, Ski-Doo snowmobiles, Chrysler outboard engines, Tornado motorboats and various agricultural machinery, etc. The shop also had its own production already in the 1960s, such as a light set pre-wired to the tractor's trailer.

Every thousandth Ford tractor sold was a party tractor with the Ylikomi Oy logo painted on the bonnet. One of these is still owned by the same family and is described in the book.

Jorma Ylikomi bought a batch of forklift trucks from Sweden, which were permanently fitted to the matching Fordson Majors that came into the shop in exchange. The Swedish batch of forklifts was apparently from a bankruptcy estate or similar.

If you browse through Ford's chronicles, it is often stated that Ylikomi Oy was the number one shop in Finland in terms of sales volume. In other words, it sold the most new and used tractors of all brands in Finland for several years. Ylikomi Oy is well known in Finland and especially in Pirkanmaa and the surrounding area, and many people have done business there in the past. Buses took you from the provinces directly to the front of the Ylikomi Oy tractor shop. At that time, the shops had 'exact' district sales limits, but there were also shops with sales above the district sales limits.

Ylikomi Oy organised various work and other demonstrations, machine days in spring and autumn, exchange tractor days, ploughing schools, participated in various fairs, e.g. 1967 Orivesi agricultural exhibition, Sato´70 in Tampere, 1970 Maansiirto Tampere and 1973 Kangasala agricultural exhibition, etc. Won various sales competitions organised by Ford and many of the staff were on several trips abroad organised by Ford.

For example, in Rovaniemi, Jorma Ylikomi has been on Ski-Doo snowmobile sales trips and brought a customer from Lapland to his home farm in Komi by plane. The customer said that the transaction was "fast-paced".

Harri has "almost all" of the shop's documents, sales documents, order forms, a box of Ford material they sent to the shop, brochures, etc. Without this material, he would hardly have embarked on this project. As well as photographs taken by his father, Lauri Ylikomi, of agricultural shows and motorcycle races, among other things.

There will be much more to the book than just 'number facts' and that is what will make it interesting. There will be a lot of illustrations in the book.

For example, Harri has a very touching story about buying his first tractor for his farm from Ylikom. The book will also include 2 Ford OK-6 tractors, of which only about 12-20 were made, TEG and Rottne forestry tractors, Ford tractors with SOS transmission, Vammas excavators, several tractors that have been in the same family since new, Jorma's Yankee and British bikes, pictures from the opening of Ylikomi Ltd, shop advertisements and much more. Also Massey Ferguson tractors and excavators from when Jorma worked at Hankkija. Harri has interviewed people who worked for Ylikomi Oy and Ford at the time, as well as several of Ylikomi Oy's customers and people who knew Jorma Ylikomi. Many of those interviewed were between 80 and 90 years old. One interviewee, aged 90, began by saying that he had turned 45 on two occasions.