Three-wheeler
vehicle with three wheels with two steering wheels at the front
A three-wheeler, tricar, or trike is a vehicle with three wheels. Some are motorized tricycles, which may be legally classed as motorcycles, while others are tricycles without a motor, some of which are human-powered vehicles and animal-powered vehicles.
Overview
Many three-wheelers, in the form of motorcycle-based machines, are called trikes and have a single front wheel, motorcycle-like mechanics, and a rear axle similar to that of a car. Often, such vehicles are owner-built using a portion of a rear-engine, rear-drive Volkswagen Beetle combined with a motorcycle front end. Other trikes include All-terrain vehicles specifically designed for off-road use.
Three-wheelers can have either one wheel at the back and two at the front (2F1R), (for example: Morgan Motor Company) or one wheel at the front and two at the back (1F2R) (such as the Reliant Robin). Due to better safety when braking, an increasingly popular form is the front-steering "tadpole" or "reverse trike" sometimes with front drive but usually with rear drive. A variant on the 'one at the front' layout was the Scott Sociable, which resembled a four-wheeler with a front wheel missing.
Three-wheelers, including some cyclecars, bubble cars and microcars, are built for economic and legal reasons: in the UK for tax advantages, or in the US to take advantage of lower safety regulations, being classed as motorcycles. As a result of their light construction and potential better streamlining, three-wheeled cars are usually less expensive to operate.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Three-wheeler” as vehicle with three wheels with two steering wheels at the front. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as vehicle with three wheels with two steering wheels at the front. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q739288. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Three-wheeler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.