World's fastest lawnmower driven
Auto Express gets behind the wheel of the 87mph Runningblade lawnmower and finds it's far more frightening than any supercar
IT hits 0-60mph in just five seconds with a top speed of 100mph…and it’s a lawnmower!
This is Project Runningblade which broke the world land speed record for a mower at Pendine Sands, South Wales at the weekend.
Runningblade will cover 147 feet per second, hitting a mile in less than 36 seconds and once up to 100mph would be able to mow an entire football pitch in just over two and a half minutes.
But Auto Express exclusively got its hands on the real fly-mow last week and had a first crack at breaking the four-year-old Guinness Record.
American Bob Cleveland held the time for the World's Fastest Lawnmower, which was set at 80.7929 miles per hour at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA, in 2006 – but it was smashed by the Brits with a new record of 87.833mph on Sunday.
Runningblade was piloted by Don Wales, grandson of Sir Malcolm Campbell — who famously set a new World Land Speed Record of 146.16mph in Bluebird on Pendine Sands in 1924.
And Wales, who has recently set world land speed records for steam-powered and electric cars, admitted the mower could have killed him.
Runningblade – a real Countax sit-down lawnmower with only a minor modifications - actually had to prove it is a working mower and cut grass immediately before the record attempt. The blades were then removed for health and safety reasons.
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Cash £26,000My record attempt was on Tarmac at the Beaulieu National Motor Museum near Southampton. The realisation of just how dangerous it was sunk in when I climbed aboard. I was then asked to attach a ‘kill switch’ to the arm of my race suit.
The threat of Runningblade rolling during a fast run worried the team so much they fixed a roll cage over it for the real world record attempt. I didn’t have that luxury.
And it’s no frills. There’s just an accelerator and brake pedal and as I put my right foot down everything rattled so fiercely I could actually feel my lungs banging against rib cage. The pace arrived suddenly but it was all power and no control.
Alarmingly I could actually see the wheels wobbling under the strain of the speed and weight of the mower. This thing is only meant to do 6mph – I was close to 60mph and it was suddenly the scariest bouncy castle ride of my life.
I honestly thought the wheels were going to crumble and fall off under the bulk of the huge front-end.
I got up to around 70mph when I ran out of track and guts. As the end of the runway drew closer I slammed my foot on the brake but nothing happened – the brakes are only meant to stop this mower at 10mph!
Finally it started to slow down and to make sure I didn’t run out of Tarmac I tried to turn the wheels but again, nothing happened – they simply could not deal with the pace – so with my lunch about to re-appear alongside my heart in my mouth, I somehow managed to bring Runningblade to a shuddering halt.
My world record bid had failed. But I had lived to tell the tale. Just.
Wales told me: “It was potentially lethal. Lawnmowers are simply not designed to do 100mph, they are too heavy and the total opposite of aerodynamic.
“The Pendine Sands are an unforgiving surface to make the attempt and if I hadn’t of built up speed in the right way and air had got underneath Runningblade it could have been disastrous.
“The worry was that the mower dug into the sand and lost balance and that would have thrown me off at 100mph – and possibly killed me.”
