V-8 Trike is One Beauty of a Beast

The following article appeared in Drive Magazine of the Santa Fe New Mexican.

By Richard C. Gross | For The New Mexican

11/14/2007

Bolt a 350-cubic-inch V-8 engine onto a 1,400-pound steel frame held up by three wheels, and it looks like something that’s unstable at any speed. But it’s not.

It’s a beauty of a beast.

Maybe tooling around in a candy-apple-green, car-powered trike merely was the next step for native Santa Fean David Montoya after he’d driven just about anything that’s fun on wheels — motorcycles, an all-terrain vehicle and more than 70 cars.

“The wonderful thing about a trike is that it’s like owning a motorcycle and driving a hot rod at the same time,” said Montoya, who at 57 is beyond midlife crisis but is conscious of the looming gray dawn of seniority.

“Most of the people who have hot rods are baby boomers getting their last dreams in while they can still drive a motorcycle,” he said during an interview at pd bean coffeehouse, which some who relive their youth with vintage cars are considering making a drive-in hangout.

“They’re realizing their mortality, and it’s not something they want to admit,” said Montoya, who owns and manages apartments in Santa Fe and served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise during the Vietnam War. “The reality sets in: If you’ve never owned a motorcycle or a trike, you’d better do it now because the clock is really ticking.”

He’s owned his 1999 Santa Fe-built trike about a year. He also drives a 1996 Honda VT 1100 motorcycle and a 1966 Mustang GT.

The estimated half-million trikes nationwide come in two flavors: conversions from motorcycles and custom-built vehicles with automobile engines. Most of the car-powered trikes have Volkswagen Beetle engines with displacements of between 1,600 and 2,000 cubic centimeters, said Tom Goettl, of Wappapello, Mo., executive director of Trike Riders International.

V-8 trikes such as Montoya’s represent only a “small percentage” of the custom-built variety, said Goettl, whose “drug-free, alcohol-free riding group” claims 3,000 members in every state but Hawaii, Maine and New Jersey.

These custom-built trikes do not have brand names like the standard Harley-Davidsons, Hondas and Suzukis of the conversion variety because each one is handmade and, Montoya said, no two are alike.

Montoya’s trike, steered with high handlebars, is powered by an Edelbrock engine taken from a 1970s Chevy Monte Carlo that’s bolted to the 14 1/2-foot-long frame ahead of the driver. It drinks through a four-barrel Edelbrock carburetor and is driven by a three-speed automatic transmission.

There’s a seat for a passenger behind the driver.

This is far beyond what, by comparison, was the toy trike Peter Fonda rode in the 1969 movie Easy Rider. His was a Harley, probably with a 1200cc engine, Goettl said.

A motorcyclist on the fastest Harley or whatever had better not gun his engine when alongside Montoya’s trike at a red light.

“Most Harley guys have a healthy respect for you,” Montoya said. “They’re both American-made, but there’s no replacement for displacement. These things are very fast, and it’s not a good idea to challenge a trike.”

“They’re very stable,” he said of the V-8 trikes. “You can take your hand off the steering going 80 miles an hour, and it’s not going to take off on you.”

Goettl, who owns a 2005 Honda Goldwing conversion, said the V-8s carry “more power than you’ll ever need.” But, he said, “they’re safe.”

Montoya won’t say how much he paid for his trike. But Goettl said such vehicles could cost between $45,000 and $50,000.

The price tag on only a rolling chassis without an engine, transmission and the gleaming paint job run about $10,000.

Some car lovers might be bewildered at the idea of spending so much money on a trike when it could be invested in a four-wheeled hot rod or spent restoring a muscle car to die for.

But then there’s always the thrill of having something unique: “When I go through the Plaza, people are gawking, taking pictures, smiling, waving,” Montoya said. “Some might think you’re a little crazy to be on this contraption, but they don’t know what they’re missing.”

He said there are about 20 V-8 trikes in Santa Fe.

“Sometimes people make me feel as if I’m a little loose in the head to do this at 57 years old,” Montoya said, tapping his temple with a forefinger, maybe wondering whether he was living up to other people’s expectations of acting his age — an issue for people over 50. “You can grow old physically, but the spirit doesn’t have to grow old.”

Richard C. Gross is a Santa Fe-based writer and editor. E-mail him at drive@sfnewmexican.com.

DeLorean Style; Nagging Problems

This article appeared in the Sante Fe New Mexican on October 24, 2007.

The sleek silver DeLorean with the powerful wide stance may have been the star of the Back to the Future movie trilogy as it zapped back and forth through time. But it’s a pig on the road and pieces fall off.

“It’s well known that the first cars were real bad,” said Larry Icerman, 62, owner of one of the better DeLoreans because his was built about midway through production in 1981. Fewer than 9,000 were built in 21 months in 1981 and 1982, and about 6,500 survive.

The signature features of the DeLorean DMC-12 — its official name — are its gull-wing doors and brushed stainless-steel body. The steel is bonded to fiberglass and brittle plastic, high-tech stuff at the time, but the workmanship suffers from poor quality. No one had glued steel to fiberglass before.

“Most of the car is plastic, and that’s the problem,” said Icerman, a consultant to high-tech industries who hails from Indiana but has lived in Santa Fe since 1984. “Automotive plastics in 1981 weren’t what they are today.”