I, along with many other people in this world, have a morbid fascination with the World’s Largest Things. Whether it’s the world’s largest pizza or the world’s largest ball of rubber bands, these things have no reason to exist and yet they do, despite everything in our bodies that says it’s wrong. And that is exactly how I feel about the world’s largest motorcycle.
They call it The Tower Trike, and this thing is just obscenely massive — and, also, kind of defies the definition of a motorcycle. It has four wheels (although the two up front are very close together), but I’ll leave it up to everyone in the comments to argue semantics.
The Tower Trike has 1491 Nm of torque coming from a two-stroke supercharged engine. While his prototype is limited to about 135 km/h, the production — yes, Gesto is aiming to make and sell these babies at $US90,000 ($124,002) a pop — should be able to hit 161 km/h.
The brains behind this whole thing is Jim Gesto, who got so tired of having close calls on his motorcycle that he decided to build something so intimidating that no one would fuck with him. It’s like when the scrawny kid gets really jacked one summer to show his bullies who’s boss. It’s like if a semi truck and a motorcycle had a baby. I hate it. I also love it.
They take it through the paces, making sure it fits through the drive through and can kinda-sorta tackle a slalom, but the main thing about the machine is its novelty. Its largesse. Its majesty, if you will.
Bikes and Beards will run you through all the things you need to know, including how its creators Frankenstein’d this thing together. I have to admit that the construction is pretty nifty — to make something this big work, it’s going to take a lot of finagling and a lot of determination.