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Jeff Regal

Thu Oct 03 2013 16:39:28 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Fancy the power-to-weight ratio of a Bugatti Veyron in your lawn mower? Of course you do!

What has 532bhp per tonne, will hammer 0-60 in four seconds and will also give your lawn a nice trim? There’s only one answer: it’s Honda’s new Mean Mower.

Taking a powerful engine and sticking it into a mower is usually the domain of idiots in sheds, but this little beauty was conceived and built by Honda’s British Touring Car Championship team, Team Dynamics. Who aren’t idiots and don’t work in sheds unless they have to. It’s even driven by Gordon ‘Flash’ Shedden, whose usual ride is a Team Dynamics BTCC Honda Civic.

It was designed from the ground up, re-engineering a Honda HF2620 Lawn Tractor with a unique and all-new chassis made from the sort of slightly forgiving chromoly steel they used to make mountain bike frames out of. Then they slotted the completely standard engine from a VTR 1000 Firestorm motorbike into it, which Team Dynamics reckon should make the Mean Mower good for the most terrifying 130mph on earth.

It’s got a custom-made six-speed paddle-shift gearbox, a bespoke Cobra bucket seat, Scorpion exhausts and a steering rack from a Morris Minor. We kid you not.

We want one. Badly. But we suspect our neighbours wouldn’t be so keen, because with noise levels rising to 130db, the Mean Mower is as noisy as a commercial aeroplane taking off outside your house. Serious ear protection required.

And yet it genuinely can still cut grass. You have to slow down to 15mph to let the banzai 4000rpm 3mm-thick steel cutting cable do its thing, but that’s still twice as fast as the original lame-ass tractor on which the Mean Mower is based.

There’s more crafty packaging going on than in a Mexican drug factory, too. The ‘grass bag’ at the back is now the home for the fuel tank, the oil cooler and a secondary radiator. We’re not sure where the grass goes, though…

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