PART THREE - Self-propelled and Ride-on The Mobilco Rota Cruiser may be Australia’s first ride-on by virtue of an engineering semantic – it was self-propelled … and sort of a ‘ride-on’.
The argument seems to depend on how one might define ‘ride-on’.
The trailing seat was an accessory, but it permitted the operator to ‘ride-behind’ the machine. Others have argued that anything that removes pedestrian (walk-behind) operation is a 'ride-on'. You decide.
This is contentious and important. In a 2015 article in Power Equipment Australia, Theo Reinhold (of Rover and Greenfield fame) said that Rover made their first ride-on in 1961. The article said this was the Rover Ranger.
I do not think that is right at all. I think he was referring to the Rover ‘Rider’! Ever heard of them? Note the accessory … See the gallery below …
I think the reader now understands my argument here. If the Rover Rider is a ‘ride-on’ then Mobilco was doing it a decade earlier than Rover!
