Read the article in The National, the UAE’s premier news title, here.
If you have a lush expanse of lawn, you’re low on time and you like your oddball thrills, then Honda might just have the answer that you’ve been looking for. This is the Mean Mower – it’s officially the world’s fastest ride-on lawnmower and it’s certifiably insane.
I’ve been invited to drive it at Donington Park, one of the bastions of British motor racing, which seems like overkill, but it’s really not. This is a seriously quick machine. At Idiada, a proving ground in northern Spain, this thing posted a record run of 186.6kph to become the fastest mower in the world. Technically, with the gearing and power, the Mean Mower should top 210kph. I don’t want to be on it when that happens.
The 110hp silhouette racer started out life as a common or garden (sorry) HF2620, and Honda delivered the mower and a VTR 1000 engine from the Firestorm motorcycle to Team Dynamics, which builds British Touring Car Championship winners for Matt Neal during the daylight hours. It became one of those oddball skunkworks projects and a labour of love full of cute touches such as wheel-mounted button shifters for the six-speed sequential ’box, a seat that sits 14 centimetres lower, and, I kid you not, a lightweight mower deck and blade driven by electric motors to leave the engine focused solely on the wheels. That also means the blades now spin at 4,000rpm. Cutting grass with this thing is like swatting a fly with a hammer.
There are no seat belts; the only safety gear that I have is some borrowed motorbike leathers and a kill switch. If I fall off then the mower will stop, apparently. Well that’s OK then.
My guides for the day wedge me firmly into the tiny seat that must have been made for a jockey or a teenage girl, and I fire up the beast. It’s loud – like racing-car loud, like loud enough for the noise police to pay us a visit, at a racetrack, that’s next to an airport. I depress the clutch, which is part of a traditional three-pedal set-up, engage first with a heavy clunk, and then try in vain to find a bite point.
My knees are up near my ears, the throttle is a peg with a roller on it, and it has all the feel and sensitivity of a rusted hinge. I don’t stall, but I bunny-hop down the road with all the elegance of an epileptic frog. I’m clamouring for the next gear, skimming off bumps in the tarmac thanks to a total, absolute lack of suspension and trying to hold myself in to the seat all at once. This is not the balletic poetry of professional motorsport.
But it is quick. I hit 100kph in four seconds; by the end of my first straight, I’m closing in on 110kph, maybe 120kph – there’s no speedo – and the only thing that really matters now is whether I can stop. This is a straight-line missile, but nobody is sure if it will drift elegantly through bends or simply flip over. I’m certainly not planning to find out today.
There’s a racing wheel, but the steering rack comes from an old Morris Minor. Nobody seems to know why, other than it was there. It makes for interesting handling – the Mean Mower is as vague in the corners as it is decisive on the straights, but then it never was built for lap times.
We hit the grass for some serious honing late in the day, and discover that it’s not really built for that either. The additional cooling requirements mean that a pair of hidden fans in the grass bag clog up regularly, and we have to blast the Mean Mower down Donington’s long straights. “The wrong kind of grass,” is Honda’s tongue-in-cheek assessment.
It doesn’t really matter. Honda set out to shine a light on its more-unusual engine builds, and it’s turned a lawnmower into a global star. It was a privilege to drive it, even if it was a pleasure to get off.