Two Wheels Good, Three Wheels Better: 1981 Tri Magnum
It’s hard to remember that there was a time before those disposable rideshare electric scooters were a plague on cities across this country. It was a simpler time when someone had to find something else to make a total fool of himself in front of the world…and I can’t imagine a better way to do it than sitting in a hammock with your knees above your head as you are slowly macerated in a sweaty fog of unburnt fuel, combustion blowby, and shame. Yes. It was 1981 and you are driving an enclosed trike — a fiberglass middle finger to all those who might judge you…coffin sized and ready to be lowered into your final resting place. At least then, nobody will see you. Find this 1981 Tri Magnum offered for $5500 in Piggott, AR via craigslist. Tip from Rock On!
The seller claims to have put over 5000 miles on this thing and driven it in at least one 8 hour (yes…eight hour) road trip. I can’t even fathom how uncomfortable it must have been to sit in this suppository shaped weeble for 8 hours on the road, but I have to imagine that this is where the COVID-19 corona virus came from. It wasn’t from eating bats in a Chinese wet market…no…it was from driving a trike for 8 hours across the wild plains of Arkansas…the combination of back sweat, gasoline, oil, and beef jerky crumbs in the apex of that hammock seat must have been enough to make any reasonable thinking virus decide it was time to obliterate humanity for their own good.
From the seller:
1981—TRI MAGNUM
condition: fair
cylinders: 4 cylinders
drive: rwd
fuel: gas
paint color: white
size: compact
title status: clean
transmission: manual
type: other
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1981 TRI MAGNUM KIT CAR—only 5000 miles—-has been driven on 8 hour trip– but still needs little things to be completed—-honda Goldwing powered—has soft & hard top—-$ 5500—–
Bravo on the commentary write up today. It was guffaw worthy. Yes, as someone who has cobbled together and fabbed up some project machines I ask "What in the world is with that seating arrangement?" I get the all in one shifter lever with clutch handle (surely attached to some basic linkage leading back to the Goldwing motorcycle's "one down and four up" pattern) But that seat! Where does ones legs go? And unless they added some crazy add on reverse gear to that drivetrain, that is a heck of an arrangement to climb out of to push it backwards out of an inconvenient downhill sloping parking spot. (That Goldwing was made long before the behemoth goldwings of recent times added electric reverse option).
I was in love with the Magnum when it first came out.
I was also younger. And stupider.
-Stan (who is now old, and still stupid)
PS Jefe, your cert is expired or something… had a really hard time posting as Stan Beyerman.