What’s the news?
The contraption you see before you is what you get when you leave a racing team in charge of a lawnmower. Welcome to the Honda ‘Mean Mower’: a 1,000cc, 109hp lawnmower that will travel to Las Vegas soon to appear at one of the biggest premier automotive trade show, SEMA.
Built from a joint effort by Honda and its British Touring Car Championship racing team, the Mean Mower is every little bit as mad as it sounds. Powering it is the same engine you’ll find on a Honda VTR Firestorm sports bike which runs through a specially-designed six-speed sequential gearbox and puts 109hp at the rear wheels…which come from a quad bike. Weighing in at just 140kg, the Mean Mower has a power-to-weight ratio of a colossal 532hp per tonne – more than a Bugatti Veyron. Other non-standard features include the bespoke seat, the Scorpion exhaust system and a steering rack that was sourced, rather strangely, from a Morris Minor.
Now, the question on everyone’s lips at this point is: Is it still a lawnmower? The answer to this question is yes, because even though the cutter-deck has been rebuilt in fibreglass and the grass box now contains a fuel tank; two electric motors spin a 3mm steel cutting cable at 4,000rpm underneath the mower. Unfortunately, drivers are limited to 25km/h while this is going on; although this is a good decision as the Mean Mower hits terminal velocity at a predictably scary 214km/h.
“Mean Mower is a fantastic showcase of Honda’s spirit of innovation and pushing boundaries, and our reputation for creating extraordinary pieces of engineering,” comments Ellie Ostinelli, PR Communications Manager for Honda. “SEMA is a perfect shop window for it, sitting alongside some of the world’s best innovations in automotive products.”
Anything else?
The Mean Mower's first public appearance on the Honda stand will take place at the SEMA Show that runs from 5th-8th November 2013. The 2014 Civic coupe is also scheduled to make its world debut at the show.