Rare German Based New Holland Excavator Spotted

New Holland has had a long history of marketing ‘badged’ machines and they don’t come much rarer than this EC600 which was discovered by our American friend heavy plant enthusiast Anthony Lucibello.

We have seen many changes over the years with New Holland, once owned by Ford, who in turn partnered up with Fiat Agri, who in 1993 took over complete control of the business. In 1999 the CNH Group was formed which included a takeover of Case, sometimes its hard to keep tabs of who actually owns who in the manufacturing industry!

From 1999 excavators for New Holland were built by German manufacturer O&K (Orenstein & Koppel) whilst the brand’s mini excavator range was built by another German manufacturer Schaeff.

The New Holland machines didn’t come much bigger than this 63-tonne EC600 model which Anthony discovered in a small pit in Vermont, in the Easter mainland of the US bordering Canada. These machines were quite rare in New Holland colours at least, and were essentially an O&K RH25.5 model in New Holland livery.

New Holland had a partnership with O&K to offer these machines to the US market, but as I understand it, not many were sold, so it’s an interesting find. As you can see in the photos, she was slightly smaller than a Cat 365, but still a big old lump of a machine.

Weighing in at 63.2-tonnes, power came from a Cummins turbo charged engine producing a power output rating of 284kw (381hp), maximum reach at ground level was 12,800mm, while maximum dig depth was 8,200mm, slew speed was a somewhat slumbering 5.3rpm.

Of course New Holland continue offer a range of badged machines to this day, with some models being sourced from Hyundai and Case. 

Pictured below is the previous generation model RH25, all be it with a less heavyweight undercarriage, in traditional O&K colours from the Digger Man Blog archive collection.

Checkout this video of another surviving EC600 that was up for sale in an auction.

The Digger Man Blog thanks Anthony for sharing his images with us.