OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Collectors Corner Identification of Particular Machines Victa Model 4 Automatic Specifications

I was trying to nail a transition date from the Automatic to the Special and found the following:

This model five is held at the Powerhouse Museum, and was given to the museum by the Victa company. It had been retained by the company as the first example produced of this model, so if anyone needs to see an accurate example of a Model 5 Series 1, this would be it:


The museum does not mention an accurate release date, other than it being designed in 1957 and released in 1958.

So, I thought determining an accurate date for the release of the Special would be a good start. This is the earliest mention I could find. It dates to the 25th of Feb, 1958:




The next step was to see if I could find any advertisement that mentioned both the Automatic AND the Special, thus confirming both models were being retailed at the same time. This ad dates to the 12th of march, 1958:



To determine a terminal date for the sale of the Automatic, I simply went to the next listed advertisement for the Standard, which is notable for the absence of any reference to the Automatic, suggesting an end date to sales of the Automatic as no later than the date of this advertisement - the 29th of August, 1958:



Just trying to build a verifiable chronology at this point...