This is the Mowserati Lawn Mower, it’s a custom-modified vintage lawn mower with a Maserati badge added to the front, a spoiler on the back, and the racing number 19 added to each side.
Now of course the Maserati legal department doesn’t know about this mower yet, and lawyers are famously unimpressed with intellectual property defying puns, so there’s a solid chance that this article will get deleted before the Mowserati is sold by Mecum in mid-May.
Fast Facts – The Mowserati Lawn Mower
- The Mowserati Lawn Mower is a bit of a mystery to us at the time of writing, we’ve done plenty of research but haven’t been able to nail down a specific vintage ride-on lawnmower that it’s based on. It does appear visually very similar to the 1960s-era Sears Craftsman mowers, so that’s currently our best bet.
- The modifications to this mower include new paint work, with the fiberglass body now finished in a high-gloss bright red, the steering tiller and seat are both white, the name “Mowserati” is written in script across the back, and there’s a Maserati logo on the front with a small white spoiler on the rear.
- The Mowserati appears to be powered by a rear-mounted Briggs & Stratton-type single-cylinder motor, which powers the blades positioned between the front and rear wheels. Steering is by way of a tiller rather than a steering wheel, a common arrangement on many early ride-on lawn mowers.
- This unusual one-off mower is due to be auctioned by Mecum in mid-May, unless the Maserati lawyers get to it first of course.
The Profound Impact Of The Lawn Mower
The invention of the lawn mower had a far more profound impact on the world than many might realize. The first mechanical lawn mower was developed and patented by Edwin Beard Budding of England in 1830, it used the forward pushing motion of the operator to spin blades on a cylinder which cut the grass.
The Mowserati has an air-cooled, rear-mounted engine powering the mower blades and the rear wheels for forward motion.
Prior to the invention of the mechanical lawn mower, manicured lawns were relatively rare as they required either grazing animals to trim them down or regular cutting by hand with a scythe – labor intensive work that didn’t provide as clean a cut as the mower invented by Budding.
Budding licensed his patent to a number of manufacturers and mass-production was underway in no time at all. Now that people had a way to quickly and easily cut grass to an even length the proliferation of lawns in private gardens took off like a rocket, and the playing fields for many sports were officially codified including cricket, association football (soccer), tennis, lawn bowls, and many others.
Today the lawn and private gardening industry is a multi-billion dollar global juggernaut, and one of the dreams held by many is to buy a house with their own lawn – which of course necessitates their own lawn mower.
The Mowserati Lawn Mower
The Mowserati Lawn Mower is a customized vintage ride-on lawn mower, it appears to be a Sears Craftsman model though we haven’t been able to nail down the specific model.
The mower uses tiller steering and it has a tractor-style seat on a curved spring to offer some semblance of suspension for the driver.
What we do know is that it has a steel frame, a fiberglass body, tiller steering, a tractor-like seat on a curved spring, and it’s powered by a Briggs & Stratton-type single-cylinder motor which powers the blades which spin under the mower between the front and rear wheels.
The customization process involved repainting the fiberglass body in bright high-gloss red, adding a white spoiler to the back and a Maserati logo to the front, adding the racing number 19 to each side, and the script “Mowserati” to the rear.
If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here on Mecum. It’s due to be auctioned in mid-May.
Images courtesy of Mecum
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
