Which Trike Do You Like?

The perennially shy Alex Roy took delivery of his Morgan Trike last year and has dutifully operated it under all conditions, including during the arrival of Hurricane Sandy. There’s something awfully charming about the “Three Wheeler”, even if the price of it would also put you in a brand-new six-speed Corvette Grand Sport. As far as not-quite-motorcycles go, I much prefer it to the Can-Am Spyder, anyway.

Much of the appeal of the Morgan is its novelty value; we didn’t get very many Morgans of any type in this country, much less three-wheeled ones. The T-Rex is probably the only other non-bike-based trike on the market. In the UK, however, the “Moggie” is just one in a large field of competitors. Some are closer to the original Morgan design than the Morgan itself, while others are futuristic in the creepy Seventies sense of the word. The Telegraph recently put eleven of them together for a short test.

The Three Wheeler Group Test isn’t exactly long-winded but it provides a nice glimpse into a kind of motoring we just don’t get in the New World. About half of them are riffs on the Morgan concept, but some, like the Blackjack, are new ideas. A potential best-of-breed combination of the vintage-trike look and modern-superbike four-cylinder engine doesn’t yet appear to exist; if you want the Morgan look, you have to take somebody’s twin, whether it’s from a 2CV, a Moto Guzzi, or a fake Harley.

Clearly the thing to do would be for TTAC to track-test all these trikes until someone is killed, probably me, but in light of current airfare rates we might try to cover the domestically-available models first. If you build a trike and you’d like to see it [s]disrespected[/s] reviewed in these pages, let us know!