RS 03 Aktivist

The Brandenburg Tractor Factory was founded in 1948 on the ruins of the former Brennabor factory. For decades, the factory had manufactured, among other things, bicycles and motorcycles, and during the war, weapons.

In 1949, serial production of the RS 03 Aktivist tractor began. The engine was a V2 diesel copied from O&K, with an output of 30 hp and crank start using glow plugs. There was no separate frame. The gearbox was a 4+1-speed Prometheus. Top speed was 17.8 km/h. A 540 rpm power take-off and a belt pulley were standard equipment. Due to the very short wheelbase and front axle design, bouncing was cited as a problem with the tractor.

The Aktivist was only in production for three years and 3,761 of them were manufactured. After that, the Brandenburg factory switched to the production of crawler tractors and, in the early 1960s, gearboxes. In the GDR tractor range, the RS 03 was succeeded by the RS 04 from the Nordhausen factory.

Photo: Kimmo Kotta