The other day, @Bobby Cole and i were coming back home from the fitness center, when we saw this crazy-looking vehicle that seems to be somewhere between a motorcycle and a sports car. The front looked like some kind of a vehicle that belonged on a racetrack, but the back of it only had one tire, more like a motorcycle, or one of the new three-wheeled cars. It said “Slingshot” ; so when we got home, I looked it up online and discovered that it is actually considered a motorcycle and is made by Polaris. It can fit two people side by side in the front, just like a little car; but there is no room for much of anything behind those two seats. You do have to have a motorcycle license to drive one; but I think that it might be cool just for toodling around town if you didn’t need to carry anything or have more than two people in the vehicle. They have been out for a few years now, but this is the first time that we have ever seen one of these.
Similar three-wheeled cars/motorcycles have come out from time to time since the 1960s or before. I remember seeing one in Green Bay, Wisconsin when I was about thirteen, maybe a little older. It looked like a cross between a car and a motorcycle and was made by Honda. Looking for a photo of it, I came across these, which are equally interesting.
We see them quite often around here. I studied the construction of one parked in the Edgewater parking garage. The typical motorcycle "side-car" design with 2 rear wheels is placed up front: two wheels spaced several feet apart, and steerable, like the front of a car attached to a motorcycle behind it with one rear driving wheel. It's complicated when compared to a two rear-wheeled motorcycle, expensive to build, either design is inherently safer than a two-wheeled cycle. Frank