During the 1930's the Auckland based company, Mason and Porter, became the New Zealand market leaders in the manufacture of lawn mowers and rotary vacuum pumps while still producing new products including washing machine parts and electric refrigerators. In 1938 the company won a contract to supply all New Zealand Government Departments with mowers. They were already supplying mowers to many Government and Local Body organisations but this contract may have been the catalyst which launched the Power Mower. Motor mowers had already been designed as early as 1937 and advertised for sale in 1939. It seems likely that the Power Mower was intended to be used by contractors rather than for domestic purposes because of the size of the cutting blades. Although Mason & Porter was heavily geared towards supporting the war effort, some motors mowers were still being made in the early 1940's. It is not known how many were actually sold, however the company took a more serious view in 1946. Side wheel hand mowers were to be the main type sold to the public in the decade after WW2 but Mason & Porter continued to experiment with motor driven mowers.
It appears that three models were produced; The earliest model was basically a hand mower with an engine on top and equipped with the same metal wheels that were standard on their hand mowers. It used a push lever starting mechanism which operated along the same lines as the pedal start on a motor cycle. Their first models were powered by a Canadian manufactured Johnson Iron Horse X-400 series four stroke engine, mounted onto a standard 16 inch side wheel hand mower with a wooden handle. The blades were driven by chains which were linked to the horizontal shaft at the base of the engine. The clutch control on the handle was used to release the clutch when starting the machine, the throttle was also located on the handle. Many of the parts were made locally, the metal bases on which the engine was mounted were cast by Mason and Porter.
The next model was fitted with rubber tyres which absorbed the vibration and the push lever starting mechanism was replaced with a pull lever.
The third generation model used a Villiers four stroke engine with a cord start and the wooden handle was replaced with a metal tubing. This model looked more like its successor, the Lawn Sprite, which superseded the Power Mower in 1952.
Initially, the number of Power Mowers produced was quite small, they were virtually hand made and were only making two a month. The reasons why the first three or four years of production were so slow was probably due to the shortage of disposable wealth as people recovered from the effect of the War and that it was a new untried product.
I have seen claims that Masport produced the first motor mower in New Zealand. I suppose this is technically correct as Morrison (now owned by Masport) sold their first production motor mower in 1935 Many examples are still in preservation. All the examples I have seen have the exhaust pipe and muffler sitting just above the fuel cap making refuelling difficult especially when the engine is hot.
Most of the information contained in this article came from the very informative book "Masport: 100 YEARS IN THE MAKING 1910-2010" written by Jim Allnatt and used with kind permission from Masport Ltd.
