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Everyone who loves old tractors can trace his passion back to a specific model or two from his youth. For Paul Nystuen it was a John Deere A and an International Harvester WD-9 that he drove on his uncle’s farm in North Dakota.

“With the WD-9 I had to hold onto the steering wheel with two hands and push with all my might on the clutch to make it work at that age,” Nystuen said.

At the end of his freshman year in engineering school at North Dakota State University Nystuen answered an ad in the local paper for a draftsman. He was hired by the Steiger Tractor Company, which had just moved its manufacturing facility from Thief River Falls, Minnesota, to Fargo, North Dakota. That was in 1969.

“My first task was the Steiger Wildcat,” Nystuen said.

At that time there had only been one built at the facility in Thief River Falls. It was shipped to Fargo and Nystuen was given two days to draw it up so workers could start building it in Fargo before that tractor was shipped out.

“Being the good, young naïve engineer that I was, I went out with yellow notepad and tape measure and sketched every part I could get to in those two days,” Nystuen said. “Then I spent the next weeks and months drawing up the details with good pencil mechanical drawings.”

This was series one of the Wildcat that eventually turned into the Super Wildcat and Bear Cat. All of them had the same chassis and the same frame, and were equipped with the Caterpillar V-8 3100 series engines and a Fuller transmission with a dry clutch.

The following summer Nystuen was sent to California for two months to develop a category 4 three-point hitch. The Steiger brothers thought they might have a market for Steiger tractors in California if they could build a big enough three-point hitch.

The company faced some tough times in the 1970s and Nystuen, who was working part-time and still going to school, was laid off. He was hired again in 1972 to work on a special project.

The project was the 4366 tractor, a joint venture between International Harvester and Steiger. Nobody was supposed to know about this because it was not a done deal between IH and Steiger at the time. Nystuen went to work in a separate building behind the prototype shop in Fargo. He worked with Jerry Joubert and Al Lieberg, two prototype people from Steiger who were talented machinists and steel workers.

“I spent that summer laying it out and drawing it up,” Nystuen said. “I was a little smarter this time so instead of drawing the parts I actually laid out the tractor.”

The 4366 used the Steiger dropbox, a Spicer 10-10 transmission with a dry clutch, an IH diesel engine and IH axles. IH dictated the industrial design of the tractor like the hood and front grill. Of course, the color was IH red.

The 4366 tractor was one of Nystuen’s favorite projects at Steiger. He worked with very good people who took it from concept to iron in about 110 days. After graduate school he went to work for Steiger fulltime in 1974.

There was a horsepower race in the 1970s in the tractor business. Like other tractor companies, Steiger tried to come out with higher horsepower tractors every year. It was easy, according to Nystuen. They just tweaked the engine a little and added another 10 to 20 horsepower.

“But we wanted to step beyond that and really go up in horsepower,” Nystuen said. “So we decided to do a triple engine tractor.”

The result was what they called Big Jack, which had 750 horsepower. Big Jack had three front ends from a Steiger Cougar, three Caterpillar 3306 engines and three transmissions tagged together in a triangle shape. The lead engine was with the cab; the other two were placed side by side.

The tractor never made it into production but it did end up on a farm near Jamestown, North Dakota.

“It was so wide and big it had to be driven 90 miles down the interstate from Fargo to the farm,” Nystuen said.