The World’s Fastest Lawnmower

The World’s Fastest Lawnmower

That’s a pretty bold title, right? Well, when you have a big enough brand behind you, like Honda do, you can be as bold as you like – especially when you deliver the goods. And that’s exactly what they’ve done here...

Introducing the world’s fastest lawnmower – “Mean Mower”

It’s capable of reaching 130mph (for you folks who like your metrics, that’s 209kmh) which is likely more than your car will do. Better yet, it can reach 60mph (96kmh) in a measly four seconds and for those who aren’t clued up on cars or anything, that’s ridiculously fast. To give you an idea of just how quick it is, we’ll compare it to the popular Aston Martin DB9 which takes at least 4.5 seconds to hit 60 – see, we told you it was quick.

The mower was originally a Honda HF2620 – technically a lawn tractor, but essentially a mower at heart. However, after Honda and their partners from the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC), TeamDynamics got their hands on it; it became something a bit more than your average mower.

[For people more interested in gardening, you might want to skip over this part as it’s more for the automotive enthusiast...]

The HF2620 has undergone some massive changes, first off is the custom-designed chassis to cope with the new power block from the ATV Firestorm, a 1000cc engine (another beast from Honda). The wheels from the quad were also taken and put onto the HF2620 in order to try and put down some of that power. With this list of ingredients and a team of mechanical wizards, the ‘Mean Mower’ was modified to insane proportions which ended up giving birth to the following figures which will have jaws dropping all over the place.

539bhp per tonne. Yes, you read that right. With a weight of just 140kg, 10 times less than the average car and 109bhp, this is a seriously fast monster. The drawback of this is that speed does not come without a price and in this case, the price is noise. Measured at 130db whilst at three-quarter revs, this is considerably louder than the lawnmower your neighbours are using. As I currently like doing comparisons, here’s another: 130db is as loud as a jet engine from 100ft away.

“Can we still use it as a lawnmower?”

The answer, amazingly, is yes! There are two electric motors upon the cutting deck which can still be used to cut grass; spinning 3mm cable at roughly 4000rpm, the lawnmower is still useable. You can also trim the grass at a quite nifty 15mph, which is double that of the original model – so it has the power to tear around a racetrack and the tameness to mow a garden, only Honda could come up with that.

We know that Honda is well known in the car industry and increasingly becoming a common name in a variety of other sectors; but why did they do it? Well, it was just a bit of fun and to show that they’re continuing to push the boundaries. “Retaining the look of the mower, and the ability to still cut grass were the biggest challenge” explained Pete Crolla, team Manager at Team Dynamics. Based on this display of innovation, we’ve got to ask the question... What’s next for Honda?