Mower built for comfort not performance
Leonardo Da Vinci and Archimedes might have had better ideas, but Merv Adlam is guaranteed to keep his family entertained with his inventions.
The Taranaki man, who found fame in 2020 with his Tesla Cybertruck replica, reckons his best invention of 2024 is his reclining armchair that can also mow the lawn.
“It’s not ideal for mowing the lawns,” Adlam admitted of the contraption he dubbed the “world’s most comfortable lawnmower” in its Trademe listing.
“But it’s good for fun.”
Adlam, who is constantly looking for bargains and parts, said he bought the armchair on Facebook Marketplace for $50 last week and coupled it with an old and rusting lawnmower he already had in the shed.
“If I want something and I can’t really buy it, I will build it to how I want it.
“You gotta try and see what happens. If it breaks, it breaks,” he said.
The 56-year-old said he was always working on new ideas.
He believes he inherited the passion for inventing from watching his Dad refurbish old engines and tractors.
Adlam, a fitter/welder, said he always liked art and working with steel.
“I can make everything you can think of,” he said, pointing at some large barbecue tables he had built for his paddock.
As you might expect, one of them is more than just a table.
While he was having a beer with his workmates recently, Adlam said he thought he could make a motorised picnic table so people could sit and enjoy a drink while being driven around the paddock.
So, he welded a table and a ride-on lawnmower together.
“It gets a bit boring just sitting here. You want to see things happening.”
Adlam’s inventions, which are often used by his kids and grandchildren, have found him a wider fame in the past.
In 2020, he bought a “smashed-up” Toyota Vitz and worked for three months on it to make it resemble the futuristic Tesla Cybertruck. He then parked it on the side of the road outside his Paraite section with a for sale sign and people would drive up the rural road to take a look at it.
“So I decided to bring it back in and put it on Trade Me,” he said.
The car was listed for $1 and sold for $999.
Along the way it was viewed 137,000 times, making it the fourth most popular car for sale on Trade Me that year.
Adlam said his “toys” were not the result of some clever man, but the embodiment of Kiwi DIY life.
“I just build the whole thing from scratch, as I want it to perform,” he said.
Adlam said he loved watching programs like Pimp My Ride and was already working on new projects.
“I have always been like that, I have always made things. There is always a way of making things better,” he said.
In his backyard he had a car he bought for $100, which “can be something”, he said, and he was working on a Hobbiton-inspired deck.
“I am fixing stuff all the time,” Adlam said. The motorised picnic table and the armchair-fitted lawn mower are on sale on Trade Me for $100 each.