Motorcycles: Corner Carving Carnivore
March 30, 2003
In 1989, the Campagna T-Rex made a dubious debut. A driver took the three-wheeled machine for test laps around a Canadian racetrack, and 10 minutes into the ride, he ran the vehicle off the course and destroyed it. It seemed as if the T-Rex was on a fast path toward extinction.
However, T-Rex inventor Daniel Campagna was not so easily deterred. His follow-up performed so smoothly that it became the platform for the current model, which I recently had the opportunity to drive—or ride. The T-Rex is a baffling machine: It possesses the name of a prehistoric creature, the shape of a futuristic transport module, and an amorphous quality that promotes car-or-motorcycle, drive-or-ride queries.
Even more puzzling, however, is the question of how to climb into the vehicle. “Sit on the side panel there, grab hold of the roll bar, swing your left leg in, and brace your heel against that cross member,” instructs Alain Fortier, Campagna’s factory representative. “Then pivot on your butt, swing your other leg in, and drop down into the seat.”
I follow Fortier’s instructions and take a seat beside him in the cockpit as he secures the removable steering wheel onto the column and ignites the engine. The 11-inch-wide rear tire spins, propelling the T-Rex onto the streets of Florida’s Delray Beach. Once we reach open road, we are neither driving nor riding—we are flying.
After several miles in the passenger seat, I take the wheel from Fortier.
I tighten my helmet strap, adjust the frame-mounted headrest, and punch the gas to thrust the T-Rex forward. The low-slung machine’s wide track hugs the road, enabling the race-tuned chassis to twist effortlessly into tight turns, and the rear-mounted engine powers the T-Rex out of the curves and onto the straight stretches.
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