Nearly all the old stuff was better beause it was built to do a job in the least time with the least fuss.
So they don't come with all the idiot moron proofing features in order to try & prove Darwin was wrong.
Some of the new features are handy.
Hydro drives make mowing and in particular manoeuvring a lot simpler but so do double cone clutches & varidrives and we have had them since the early 70's AFAIK.
Snappers I am not familiar with as if we got them down here they were rebranded under a local name, but again the only people who will want one over new Yazibiuto is some one who previously owned one and wants another.
This is not a big market and never will be. As you are replacing what was a smalle section of the market who bought a mower for $ 100 20 years ago, conveniently forgetting that $ 100 two years ago was a months wages and expect to pay price depreciated from the original purchase price in todays dollars.
My father bought his first PETROL POWERED PUSH MOWER over 3 years hire purchase. It cost him 」 35 at a time when he got paid 」 8 / week for 50 hour week and a small car was 」 120 .
The best push mower ever built was the Vict Vortex, we sold them to over 100 countries back in the 70's
The USA recognised they were vastly superior to the local mowers so wacked Victa with a massive traunch of "safety feature modifications" none of which local makers had to comply with in order to prevent them being imported.
These mowers are now approaching 50 year old and still working well and good ones go for around $ 100 on the second hand market.
I get $ 200 for them with a 3 year warrantee but usually only after I loan a customer one.
No one ever rings me and asks have I got a Vortex / Mustang-V for sale and in two years I have never had a single response to advertisments for them because Joe Public still thinks second hand mowers are worth $ 20 tops no matter how much reworking has been done to them and how much waranttee you give.
Joe public do not trust or believe the makers warrantees and the proof of that is right here on these pages.
Just about every time a maker honours a warantee claim the claimant gets on here proclaiming their amazement that it actually happened.