Mowers and Bicycles
February 16, 2025 in Articles, Machinery
It is often overlooked, but many of the manufacturers of vintage horticultural machinery were also involved in manufacturing an array of other items. Just because we know them for horticultural items doesn’t mean they didn’t have interests (or beginnings) in other products.
One modern example is Honda. We know them in horticultural circles for starting to make lawnmowers in 1978 (47 years ago as I write this!), but they also manufacture across a range of areas, including automotive, motorbikes, marine, aircraft, generators, and power equipment.
Going way back to the 1950s, Nutt Engineering of Cambridge, who made the Hayn mowers, had a sideline in producing wire-framed clothes horses – a world away from the Honda empire, but companies need to diversify to keep working.
You may know the USA ride-on mower manufacturers Huffy, Murray, and AMF (American Machine and Foundry), but did you know that in the early-to-late 20th century they all had an interest in the manufacture of bicycles? Indeed, there was a booming industry with bikes, followed by a similar interest in ride-on mowers and powered garden equipment. Manufacturers diversified, expanded, and invested where the market and profits were.
Like the ride-on mowers that Huffy, Murray, and AMF sold in the UK, many of the bikes they produced were sold worldwide.
I have found some USA adverts which show the bikes that these ride-on mower manufacturers made:
Huffy
Huffy, who produced bikes throughout the 20th century, is best known in the UK for their diminutive yet well-engineered ride-on mowers in the 1960s and ‘70s. Along with the mowers, Huffy was advertising 55 bike models including tandems and trikes in America.
In the mid-1960s, Huffy collaborated with the English engineer Alex Moulton and created the Huffy-Moulton bike (see image, right), this was claimed to be the first basic advance in bike design in 70 years. The bike had small wheels, instant acceleration due to gearing and low inertia, and was said to be nimble with light steering.
Interestingly, in the early 1980s, Huffy signed an agreement with Raleigh bikes in the UK, which gave them exclusive rights to manufacture and sell the Raleigh models in the United States. Huffy also sponsored a professional BMX (Bicycle Motocross) team. BMX started in the early 1970s in the USA, and eventually, Huffy had a range of BMX bikes. The Anglo-American BMX Championship, held in the UK in 1982, included the Huffy BMX Racing Team.
It is reported that bikes for the Huffy brand are now made in China.
Murray
Murray is another name that we associate with mowers in the UK. In the 1970s, many Murray ride-on mowers and garden tractors were rebadged and sold as Mountfield-branded machines. In the 1930s, in the USA, Murray started producing bikes alongside car parts and children’s pedal cars. However, in 1985, F. H. Tompkins, the owner of the UK company Hayter, purchased Murray for the mower brand and production, then in 2005 Briggs & Stratton took over Murray. According to research, Murray bikes had been produced until the end of the 1990s.
AMF -American Machine and Foundry
The third company that had an interest in mowers and bikes was AMF. The company manufactured some of the Massey Ferguson lawn and garden tractors starting in 1966, as well as the first ATCO ride-on mowers in the early 1980s. They also produced models branded as Dynamark, which Westwood sold in the 1970s before creating their own range of ride-on mowers. AMF had purchased the Roadmaster brand of bikes from the Cleveland Welding Company in 1950. There were 41 bike models in 1970, and bikes were manufactured until the late 1990s.
