JIM - Yes, the tractors were designed by the plants that built them. They would share certain things, like the early BM's, "British M's" looked a lot like the FARMALL M's built in Rock Island, the sheet metal, major castings, ALL the same as the M's, but they had an integral 3-point hitch, direct start diesel engines, still used band brakes after Rock Island switched to disk brakes. I suspect all the castings and stampings were made in England.
I know the French plant built a lot of small diesel powered tractors, little 2 & 3 cyl direct start diesels. They also built a duplicate of the Farmall CUB, called the Super CUB, but I think it was gas-powered. Looked very similar to a US built CUB.
Same thing with Geelong, Australia, we shipped them a couple containers of parts every month, mostly machined rearend housings, gears & shafts. I suspect they got engines from Melrose Park, IL, and even Nuess Germany. And everything else they bought locally. They were a "model behind FARMALL", while Farmall was building 786,886,986,1086,1486,1586's, Geelong was building 966's, and before that they built 956's while Farmall was building 966's. Same thing with Saltillo, Mexico, we shipped them some 86-series parts every month to build 56 & 66-series.
I think IH originally used LUCAS electrics, but eventually went to Bosch. Not sure about the clutch, may have been LUK. But then they may have bought them from Rockford Clutch in Rockford, IL like FARMALL did. IH was pretty proud the the "Dyna-Life Clutch" they worked with Rockford Clutch to create, used 4 or 6 pads of ceramic and copper for the friction material depending on size of the tractor. FARMALL started using them in the mid-1960's, but not sure if other countries used them then or not. IH even offered them for sale for the old M's & H's for a period of time.
IH did do a lot of shipping of parts between plants. When I started in Production Scheduling at FARMALL, we had "Collateral Parts", that we shipped to LVL & East Moline, machined gears mostly. Some plants like foundries existed simply to cast & machine parts. IH still has a foundry in Waukesha that a former co-worker of mine set-up their machine shop to ship finish machined parts from probably 30 yrs ago. But most plants did have a finished product they built. Like Melrose Park, IL, they built IH crawler tractors on one side of the aisle, and machined & build IH 300 & 400-series diesel engines on the other. Canton, IL made moldboard plows, but also shipped a LOT of fabrications, like the entire frt frame weldment of the 2+2 tractors, and some smaller stuff that transferred from IH East Moline like the cab steps, battery boxes, 3-pt hitch lower arms and top links for the 86-series.
