Three-Wheeled Thunder

THREE-WHEELED THUNDER

IF IT’S GOT A HANDLEBAR, IT MUST BE A...WHAT?

JON F. THOMPSON

INBREEDING, I THINK. THAT'S THE problem. Gotta be. Inbreeding, see, gets you cats with six toes on each foot, and human beings with diminished mental capacities.

So, what do you get when you breed a car with a motorcycle? You get the American Thunder Tryke. What it is, is a seat, a tiller, a gas pedal and a set of exhaust headers arranged to evacuate the cylinders of a 200-horsepower, 350-inch Chevy V-Eight. What it has is a voice like an angry volcano, and a lightning-bolt urge to accelerate.

It is simply another development of a fine old American tradition, one with its roots set firmly in various threewheeled utility vehicles of yore-especially HarleyDavidson’s line of 45-cubic-inch, Flathead three-wheelers.

The tradition, dormant for a while, redeveloped in the ’60s and ’70s, when specialty builders assembled trikes based on air-cooled Volkswagen and Corvair engines. And now there’s this machine-crafted in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that center of art, high technology and new-age thinking-by a small gang of trike enthusiasts (American Thunder Tryke, Inc., 1273B Calle de Commercio, Santa Fe, NM 87501; 505/989-4059).

Don’t confuse the Thunder Tryke with art, high-tech or new-age thinking, though. It isn’t any of those things. Think of it only as the most outrageous, outlandish, look-at-me cruisemobile yet built. Think of it also as probable-cause on wheels. Hot-rodders, gearheads, gas station attendants-they all love it. So, we reasoned, would traffic cops.

What they all find, when they sidle up to this screaming yellow zonker to check it out, is a picture of simplicity. What could be simpler than a tubular frame of 2-inch, .125wall, 1020 mild-steel tubing? After welding is complete, and the assembly prepped and painted, the girder fork, complete with springs and Volkswagen Scirocco-derived shock, is attached. Steering-head angle is 43.5 degrees, a number chosen, according to Thunder Tryke Sales Manager John Harvey, to skirt some states’ anti-chopper laws, which preclude steering-head angles greater than 45 degrees. Next comes a Ford rear axle, mounted with upper and lower radius rods for fore-aft placement and to resist axle twist, and with a Panhard rod to insure precise lateral placement. Shocks are coil-over units, rear brakes are either Ford production units or Wilwood racing brakes, while up front a single-piston Harley caliper clamps one huge rotor.

Next comes the GM TH350 automatic trans, and then, piece by piece, the engine. Which engine? That depends. Any small-block Chevy will fit, but high-rolling thrill-seekers may specify anything up to and including the 345-horsepower LT-1 Corvette engine. Seems like enough to haul around an 1800-pound vehicle, right?

After that, all that’s left to do is install the racecar-type fuel cell, the wiring loom, instruments, lights, seats and other details. When that’s done, you’re ready to stand back and let people inspect and admire your Tryke.

But that’s only half the fun. Piloting it is the other half, partly because of what happens when you whack its throttle, and partly because of the looks of complete and awesome incredulity it sparks-at least from some people.

An interesting thing, this latter point. Here in Southern California, the attention the Tryke gets is as varied as the residents. See, a huge percentage of the population is composed of recent transplants who are concentrating on putting down roots fast, and on not making too much a spectacle of themselves while they do so. Most aren’t surprised by any weirdness perpetrated by SoCal natives. They pay little attention to the Thunder Tryke. Also not paying much attention are most adult males, who are, for the most part, far too cool and sophisticated to gawk at the Tryke. Hey, they wouldn’t gawk at Michael Jordan cruising around with his polished dome jutting from the open top of a brilliant yellow Ferrari. Are they going to look at some geek in a three-wheeled hot-rod? Not hardly. Around here, see, One Isn’t Impressed. You’d have to ride down the Pacific Coast Highway on the back of a fire-breathing dragon, a squad of nude women directing traffic for you, to get these guys’ attention.

The minority that does pay serious attention is composed of gearheads, speed freaks and hot-rodders. Also teen-aged boys. The gearheads don’t care how many wheels it’s got, they care about the fuel cell (from a racecar), about the quality of the welding on the frame (generally good), about the state of tune of the Chevy motor (mild). The kids just want to know what happens when you nail the throttle.

What happens, I tell them, is that the Tryke leaves. But there’s stuff you’ve got to do before you get to that stage. You’ve got to settle into the seat and shrug into the fourpoint harness, and put on your helmet. Why the belts and the helmet? Because in some states the Tryke qualifies as a car and in others as a motorcycle. What really matters, however, is what the nearest highway patrolman thinks it is, and to keep the Heat in a state of benevolent disinterest, one soon learns to behave as if the Tryke is both car and bike.

Safety concerns handled, you get serious. Pump the gas pedal once to set the choke on the big four-barrel carb, and twist the key. The barely muffled Chevy rips into life with a sprint-car roar that turns heads everywhere, and settles into a lazy idle with an intake whoosh sufficiently powerful to suck small pebbles and passing birds into the four-barrel’s filtered maw. Don’t be put off by the racket, Harvey tells me, this engine is an old dog of a shop motor that makes a mere 200 horsepower. How fast could it be?

Plenty fast, is what, though I’m not really sure I want to know. Listen, I’m way past any reasonable eligibility for speeding tickets. Next traffic stop, they’ll just shoot me. Ah, well. I decide to go for it, and manipulate the positive lock-out B&M shifter into Reverse-proof that this can’t be a motorcycle?-and back out of the driveway, a process as weird and unsettling as a certified letter from your ex-wife’s lawyer. The Tryke’s steering is heavy and slow, and it turns in a circle about the size of the Rose Bowl-ideal for perfecting your seven-point turns.

Now, select Drive, firm up my grip on the handlebar, check the mirrors for the approach of cops, and nail the castaluminum pedal. The Chevy bellows and hurls the Tryke down the road like a bolt out of a crossbow, with very little spin from the huge Goodrich radiais. Phew. Waggle the bars a bit, the Tryke follows its front wheel nicely. Tap the brake, it slows. Tap it harder and squeeze the front brake, it slows more quickly. Give it some gas then nail all three brakes, the rears lock up with a howl. Gas it hard and the front end gets light. Yee-haw!

Okay, initial research out of the way, my wife Laura and I decide to spend a Saturday afternoon cruising Glendale, where we live, checking out reactions. First stop, after a cruise down the main drag, where nobody pays attention at all to the Tryke? To see my pal Lincoln, a serious-minded lab technician who surely will be able to offer a serious clinical view of the Tryke. Getting there is a challenge because maintaining Big Mo around the steep, tight curves on the way to Line’s hillside home un weights the inside rear tire, which lights up with the Chevy’s torque. Not exactly a surreptitious approach. He’s waiting for us outside, a big smile on his face. “Dang, that thing’s beautiful,” he exults, “let’s go for a ride.” So much for the lad’s clinical objectivity. Laura climbs out, Line climbs in and we’re off, my eye peeled for a sign of Glendale’s Finest. Certainly, in Lincoln’s high-zoot foothill neighborhood, someone will have called the cops at first sight (and sound) of the Tryke. But no. We return unencumbered by law enforcement, and in fact, complete our entire experience with the beast with absolutely no attention from the police. Zero. None. Very curious.

Line wants to know more, but we’ve got experiments to conduct. We’re off to check with Laura’s pal Darlene, a gorgeous RN/MBA who drinks only champagne and who is never, ever, seen in anything but luxury cars and $600 suits. Surely she’s sufficiently zooty not to be amused by this toy, eh? Wrong. Alerted by the Tryke’s exhaust racket, she bolts out her front door wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and demands a ride right now. We strap her in-her parents, visiting her from out-of-state, watch, horrified looks on their faces. I light the fire and blast off. I can’t hear much over the Chevy’s roar, but I can hear Dar laughing-yes, howling-behind me through the whole short ride. Eloquent comment, in spite of the fact that the Thunder Tryke is a lot more like beer from a pop-top can than it is like Möet & Chandon.

Finally we roll to a stop across the street from our house, where we can show the Tryke to our pal Jim, a high-roller insurance executive. Jim, as serious a guy as I know, a guy who thinks of life in terms of value, insurance risk and what it all means to his company’s Big Picture, ought to see the Tryke as a serious threat not only to insurance solvency, but to public decency, right?. Wrong. He caresses it with his eyes as though it is the latest Playmate. Is he up for a ride? Dumb question. He can’t clamber aboard fast enough. So we spend a while this pristine afternoon cruising freeways, taking off-ramps just for the pleasure of illicit full-throttle acceleration back down the on-ramps.

“Man,” Jim says, his ride over, “man. That thing scoots. How much did you say it costs?”

Well, that’s the hard part. This is a simple beast, right? Tubular frame, buy-it-anywhere Chevy motor and trans, stuff like that. But the price for a turnkey machine can be as high as an astounding $29,900, for one with a a full-on Corvette LT-1 engine.

That number dampens the zeal that’s flowing from the herd of neighbors gathered around the Tryke. “But wait,” I hear myself saying. “You can buy it in kit form, the complete chassis, for $8595, and then you just buy the rest of the stuff you need as you can afford to.”

Wait a minute: What am I, a Thunder Tryke salesman, $500-down-and-$500-a-month-will-get-you-inta-one-athese babies?

Meanwhile, a question remains unsolved. I’m wondering whether you ride the Tryke or drive it-after all, it’s neither fish nor fowl, neither car nor bike.

Then it dawns on me, that’s exactly right. It isn’t any of those things. It’s a trike. This one just happens to be more cleverly designed, more cleanly finished and a lot more powerful than most. And though its primary joy involves short bursts of acceleration, it also happens to be one hell of a lot of fun. Its steering is a little heavy, and it likes to go in straight lines a whole lot better than it likes to turn comers. Its ride is exceedingly harsh and with these brakes, and its Arrest-Me-Now aesthetics, there’s no way I’d go any faster than about 65 mph in/on the thing.

But there I go, taking it too seriously. Do that, and you risk taking life itself too seriously. All that gets you is old too soon. This three-wheeled piece of inbred weirdness may not be a motorcycle, but it is as much a diversion as any two-wheeler. And at the bottom line, that is its charm. This prototype has some rough edges, and it may not be everybody’s cup of tea. But here’s an undeniable fact: It’s highly visible, highly unusual, highly loud, highly quick and highly fun.

Maybe it isn’t all that far from a motorcycle, after all. □