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Converter, Engineering, Manufacturer · Hounslow, Middlesex, United Kingdom · 1919–1983

Roadless Traction Ltd

Traction engineers founded at Hounslow in 1919 by Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Henry Johnson, a First World War tank designer, and best known for rubber-jointed tracks, half-track conversions and four-wheel-drive Ford tractors. For the Forestry Commission it built the Forest Rover of 1961 — a 109-inch Land Rover on huge tractor wheels, of which only about nine were made.

History

Roadless Traction Ltd was registered in 1919 at Hounslow, Middlesex, by Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Henry Johnson, a long-serving Royal Engineers officer who had been deeply involved in British tank development during the First World War. His particular contribution was the rubber-jointed track, a flexible running gear that could be driven at road speeds without shaking a machine to pieces, and the firm's early trade was in fitting it: half-track conversions for commercial-vehicle manufacturers, and full-track conversions for agricultural tractors. By the early 1930s Roadless was making rubber-jointed full-track conversions for the Fordson Model N and other tractors of the day, and supplying rubber-jointed tracks for Bristol and Ransomes MG crawlers; a Rushton Roadless tractor was also built around 1929-32.

After the Second World War the market moved from tracks to four driven wheels, and Roadless moved with it. It imported four-wheel-drive conversion kits for the Fordson Major from Selene of Italy, launched the Manuel-Roadless four-wheel drive in 1956 and followed with kits for the Fordson Dexta and the International B 450. From 1960 until the company's end its principal business was building four-wheel-drive conversions of Ford tractors — the Ploughmaster and Roadless numbered series among them — plus some other makes, sold as complete tractors under the Roadless name.

The Land Rover connection was a small but memorable sideline. In the late 1950s the Forestry Commission found that standard Land Rovers grounded on the deep plough furrows of its upland plantations, and after its own test vehicles of 1958-59 it turned to Roadless. The firm rebuilt the long-wheelbase 109 on widened axles carrying large tractor wheels and tyres, with flat panels in place of the front wings and tractor-style mudguards at the rear, transforming ground clearance and flotation. After some eighteen months of Rover-sanctioned testing the conversion was launched in 1961 as the Forest Rover on the Series II/IIA chassis. It remained a tiny-volume special — people who worked at Roadless put the total at about nine vehicles including two prototypes, though some accounts suggest up to twenty — with five or six known survivors, among them BNB 615B, the Central Electricity Generating Board's 'Rheidol Bug', now in the Dunsfold Collection.

The company left Hounslow for Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire in 1979. It did not last long there: Grace's Guide records a voluntary liquidation in the early 1980s, and tractor histories date the end of Ford-based conversion production to 1983. No Roadless vehicle-building company survives, though the marque retains a strong following among vintage tractor enthusiasts.

Imagery

Not a Land Rover: a six-cylinder four-wheel-drive Roadless Fordson Major with Boughton winch and sawbench for forestry work — the tractor-conversion business that was Roadless Traction's main trade.
Not a Land Rover: a six-cylinder four-wheel-drive Roadless Fordson Major with Boughton winch and sawbench for forestry work — the tractor-conversion business that was Roadless Traction's main trade. Bugsybanana, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗
A 1964 Series IIA Forest Rover, converted by Roadless Traction of Hounslow and now part of the Dunsfold Collection.
A 1964 Series IIA Forest Rover, converted by Roadless Traction of Hounslow and now part of the Dunsfold Collection. andreboeni, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 ↗

Vehicles in this registry (1)

Sources & citations

Maker record updated 2026-09-10T04:48:16.009Z · status: researched