It's like driving a hot tub on three wheels June 1983 There must be something about three wheels that defies the laws of nature. Driving the Trihawk down the street, and guys will run out of barbershops to start at the thing. You can see their value systems crumbling before your eyes. It breaks all the rules. Of course, that's probably why the kids like it. They figure if anything as good as the Trihawk is possible, then being an adult might be a pretty good deal after all.
Yet the Trihawk isn't just another madcap contraption designed to attract the investment dollars of TV talk-show hosts. From the moment millionaire businessman Lou Richards and race-car designer Bob McKee began sketching concepts in a Mokena, Illinois, garage three years ago, the Trihawk was intended to be a serious car. Richards wanted to recapture the spirit of fun and adventure he found in the Lots 7. Government regulations, however, soon convinced him that a three-wheeler, which according to the feds is a motorcycle, permitted far more fun and adventure than a four-wheeler. After all, the Morgan trike worked, didn't it? Three years later, several prototypes, and at least 100,000 miles of testing later, Hawk Vehicles, Inc., has established a sales and manufacturing facility at 34091 Coast Highway, Dana Point, California 92629 (714-493-3333). More than ten Trihawks have been built already, and plans call for 150 cars to be produced each year. Even at a price of $14,888, such expectations are not exactly outlandish for the Trihawk gives you a taste of what it must have been like for Henry Ford the first time he burst out of the carriage house with his motorized butt; dogs yap, children scram, and daughters are locked away. Besides, it really works. Even a driver as reserved and well bred as Patrick Bedard would have to give out a polite hoo-ha at the wheel of a Trihawk. The Trihawk is nothing less than a real live sports car, and it shows in the way the car has been designed and built. McKee regards it as nothing more than a pure front-wheel-drive car. His experience with the design of a pair of factory Sciroccos for IMSA GTU road racing in the late Seventies suggested the concept. As long as the front wheels are doing all the work, he reasoned, why not minimize the complication at the back of the car? A three-wheel car was the logical answer. It's clear from a look at the Trihawk that the front of the car does indeed do all the work, while the back is just along for the ride. The engine and suspension are attached to a front bulkhead built from square-section tubing -- just like a race car's -- while a simple perimeter frame locates the rear wheel and carries the fiberglass tub that holds the passengers. The front suspension design also reflects McKee's racing background, with upper and lower unequal-length control arms and coil-over shock absorbers. Hawk builds its own upper control arms, but the lower arms, as well as the hubs, the disc brakes, the tie rods and the suspension bushings, come from the Renault Le Car.
The one anomaly here lies at the other end of the half-shafts: a 1299cc air-cooled flat-four engine usually seen in the Citroen GSA. Not only was Citroen eager to sell Hawk the requisite number of engines, but it enthusiastically provided engineering assistance. As a result, a Citroen-powered Trihawk went to France in late 1981, where it was evaluated by top management, including the president, and the engineering staff. moreover, four Citroen engineers were dispatched to the U.S. to assist with durability testing. Citroen even evaluated the Trihawk's aerodynamics in its wind tunnel: the body, designed by David Stollery, a former GM stylist who also established Calty, Toyota's U.S. design studio, recorded a Cd of 0.43 with a small frontal area. The use of a French engine of such meager specification would ordinarily not cause much heart flutter around C/D's testing department particularly considering the treatment it could expect at the hands of the EPA. But because the Trihawk is regarded as a motorcycle, only a little tweaking of its two-barrel carburetor sneaks the Citroen engine past 1985 motorcycle-emission standards with 64 hp in place. Although that doesn't sound like enough power for recreational motoring, the Trihawk's light weight -- 1370 pounds when the 11.0 -gallon fuel cell is full -- means you can actually go fast enough to make your eyes water, at least a little bit. As it turns out, the Trihawk is an Eighties version of that time-honored classic, the British sports car. It combines a design sketched out on the floor of a garage, a few off-the-shelf components, and a lot of (ingenuity?) into a whole greater than the sum of the parts. All the sensory inputs recall the glory days of sports cars with no doors. You climb over the gunwale, slide your legs into the narrow footwells, and fall into the form-fitting French seats. There's a nice sport wheel to hang on to, and VDO gauges of the requisite number and function peek out at you from all the right pots on the dash. Choke the engine and it comes to life with a deafening cacophony of fan whir, intake roar, valve clatter, and exhaust boom, just as if it were English instead of French.
And finally you're off. It's like driving a hot tub on wheels. You're totally exposed in the tradition of open kidney driving; the air carries the scent of new-mown lawns; and people on every corner swivel around for a better look. You feel more secure than you would in a motorized hot tub, however, thanks to the chrome-moly roll bar overhead and the substantial frame section at your hip. And besides, the Trihawk goes down the road like a regular car. The front suspension is almost supple, and the machine's rubber bushings insulate you effectively from bumps, while the seat does its bit to absorb the odd jolt. Still, the rear frame's lack of torsional rigidity leads to shudder over the bumps, and the proximity of the rear wheel to your rear end results in a thump now and again. On the whole, though, the Trihawk drives just like a car, except for two things. First, you have to learn a new technique for straddling debris in the roadway, and second, you learn to be wary of station wagons maneuvering for a closer look. As a sensory experience, the Trihawk can be a little overpowering, however. Heat pours off the transmission tunnel in a fashion that recalls long summer afternoons on the Long Island Expressway and certain old English cars that nicely imitated convection ovens. And then there's the exhaust noise. Maybe it's meant to disguise the Volkswagen sounds produced by the engine; in any case, a full-throttle blast of 103 dBA will convince you that earplugs are mandatory. The speakers for the Blaupunkt radio offer less than quality sound reproduction anyway, while ignition noise overwhelms AM reception altogether.
Photography by Robin Riggs |
