One plot point of my book currently relies upon whether a farmer would have used a quad bike/ATV to get around his land in 1984. The book is set in Britain where today the use of quad bikes in farming is ubiquitous. Looking at Wikipedia, Honda manufactured ATVs since the 1960s, and by the 1980s still had a virtual monopoly. Quad bikes made major appearances in TV shows and movies such as James Bond (Diamonds Are Forever) and the UK's Doctor Who. But did they make major appearances in farming?? Lol Thanks in advance if there are any experts on the near history of farming hanging around
"Commonly known as an All-Terrain-Vehicle (ATV), the history of the four wheeled monsters dates back to the 1960s. Although back then, ATVs were very different compared to the ones we use today. Previously, ATVs used to refer to amphibious six wheeled vehicles such as the ‘Jiger’. Around 20 years later, more high performance bikes became available on the market. However, the first high performance ATVs didn’t have four wheels. Oh no, they in fact had three!" source
In the 70's a few of my friends had relatives with small farms, and I visited a couple of them. As far as I remember, none of them were using ATV's, it was all tractors and trucks. Of course I'm talking a super-small sample size here, probably 3 farms, all very small, and I don't think I visited any of them more than once, for a few minutes to an hour maybe. There may have been ATVs in the barn that I didn't see. But I somehow don't think so. As J.T. suggested up there ^, they were kind of a novelty until well into the 80's at least. And yeah, I remember at first people thought the new 3-wheelers were really cool, until we started hearing how frequently they liked to flip over! Then came the 4-wheelers, supposed to be far more stable.
As J.T. Woody and Xoic have already pointed out, the ATVs from the 60s were pretty much all three-wheelers, and they were unstable and dangerous as hell. They also weren't especially useful, since they had no provision for carrying anything other than a rider. Since I'm located in the U.S. I certainly can't address what was or wasn't being used in the U.K. in 1984, but I very much doubt that quads had made it into mainstresam use in farming. Fuzzy recollection suggests that 1984 was around the time the market was transitioning from trikes to quads.
An ATV would seem like a luxury item since it can't carry things, plow fields or thresh grain. Especially back then. Now you can get them pretty cheap on the secondary market. When I lived in New Hampshire, everyone and their uncle had an ATV collecting dust somewhere. Lots of transplants and weekend warriors that got bored quickly. They'd practically pay you to take it off their hands. Hell, my neighbor used to ride his in circles around his house blasting Motley Crue just to feel like he was getting some use out of it.
What I see on some of the few farms remaining around here aren't really the ATV-type quads, but these Kawasaki Mule utility vehicles. They actually have a [small] load bed, and the driver and passenger(s) sit on a bench seat, not a saddle. https://www.kawasaki.com/en-us/side-x-side/mule/3-passenger/mule-pro-fx?cm_re=SUBBRAND-_-MULE:MODELS-_-VIEWMODELS
According to my landlord who's a dairy farmer (in the uk) they got their first quad bike in early 90s
Jeeps and Harvester Scouts seem to have been pretty common "farm carts" at one point in the past. I remember one guy where I grew up (Alberta) who got an M3-halftrack from somewhere and used it as a snow-plow. So, there's that.
