While almost everything on the Magnum was already in the works, it was the complete package that made the tractor special. The transmission was mostly identical (housing, shaft layout, etc) to what IH already had on the market, except there were clutch packs instead of syncro gears. The dash was basically what Case had on the 94/96 series, but just a newer generation. The side exhaust had already been on the Case, but moving it to the right side was much better. I don't recall (famous last words?) any tractors prior to the Magnum having electronic hitch controls though. I don't know which engineering team was responsible for it.

I could go on. My point is you can find elements of past design and current engineering work from both brands in the Magnum. I think the finished product was brilliantly put together. It would have been hugely difficult to get everyone working in the same direction in such a short period of time after that forced merger. I think they knew they had to hit a homerun to keep both Case and IH's history alive. I say congratulations!

Now, what they did with the Maxxum brought things back to earth. A decent enough tractor, but quality control was awful in the early days. I was working for Case IH at the time. We used to joke that that we would answer the phone "Maxxum hotline".