We’ve all seen biker guys on trikes that have the front end and handlebars of a motorcycle and the back end of a car, often an old Volkswagen Beetle.
If you’ve lost the use of your legs but don’t want to give up riding altogether, or your pillion is so fat you just don’t trust yourself being able to keep a regular bike upright at stoplights, they make sense. But the one thing they don’t deliver is that rhythmic motion you get when you lean a bike into a corner then send it back over the other way for an opposing turn. But the undeniably crazy Carver One does.
Launched by a company in the Netherlands in 2007, the Carver One has a single front wheel and body that tilts up to 45 degrees like a conventional motorcycle with the help of a hydraulic ram. But the two-wheel rear axle remains permanently vertical. Further confusing matters, the driving environment is straight from a car and features a steering wheel, three pedals and a manual gearshift on the right hand side, but the seating layout is tandem-style, with the passenger sitting directly behind the driver.
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The rear wheels are turned via a turbocharged 659 cc Daihatsu 16-valve inline four, which is the kind of motor you get in Japanese kei microcars. It’s only rated at 64 hp (65 PS), but because the One weighs only 1,477 lbs (670 kg), it can allegedly hit 60 mph (97 km/h) in 8 seconds and tops out at 115 mph (185 km/h). Which is probably plenty, though it meant the One offered less performance than the Lotus Elise you could have bought for the same money back in the late 2000s.
The 2008 car pictured is currently being auctioned on the Collecting Cars website, where the ad states that only 200 were made before the supply of Daihatsu engines dried up and the company went bust. But a quick look at Carver’s own website reveals that the company is back in business and making something very similar in both passenger and van forms, only these days they’re EVs and limited to a less terrifying 50 mph (80 km/h).
