By Ed Offley

PANAMA CITY BEACH, May 1, 2008 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) --
Judd and Connie Elliott walked up to the California Sidecar display area at Frank Brown Park and gazed at the future of motorcycling. Parked in front of an oversized tractor-trailer rig were several Harley-Davidson and Honda motorcycles whose chrome work and freshly waxed paint gleamed in the noon sun. What distinguished them from the hordes of motorcycles driving down U.S. 98 or parked at various Beach hotels and restaurants was very simple and obvious.

They were tricycle conversions, "trikes" in the jargon of the motorcycling community.

The middle-aged couple from northern Alabama eyed a deep blue Harley Electroglide that had been converted into a trike. Connie Elliott climbed on and sat in the elevated rear seat with a wide grin as her husband studied the machine intently.

Tony Sparacino, a customer relations executive with California Sidecar, said converting large cruisers such as the Harley Electroglide or Honda Gold Wing into a trike is a major growth trend within the motorcycle world. Virginia-based California Sidecar manufacturers a diverse product line of motorcycle trailers and sidecars, but its fastest-growing item is the trike conversion kit, he said.

The trend is directly connected with the aging of the Baby Boom generation and its members who long have been involved in motorcycling and rallies such as Thunder Beach, Sparacino said.

"There are more and more baby boomers getting to the stage where they need to consider back problems, leg problems and knees that make it harder to operate two-wheeled motorcycles," he said.

Ronnie Ray, owner of R&R Trikes of Jasper, Ga., agreed.

"The safety factor is the main thing," Ray said of trike conversions. "You lose a lot of danger going from two to three wheels."

There have been threewheeled motorcycles as long as there have been two-wheeled models, but it has been only in the past two decades that manufacturers refined the design and safety features that go into the current conversion models, Sparacino said.

Sparacino said his company employed automobile designers familiar with Formula One race cars to come up with the conversion kits it now sells. The key element was to include a horizontally mounted shock absorber to retard "wheel lift" during a sudden or rapid series of turns.

"What we did was horizontally mount the shock and torsion bars above the two rear wheels," he said. "It is designed not to let a wheel go up; in a turn, when pressure gets tight on one side, it pushes back" on the opposite wheel.

Converting an existing motorcycle into a trike costs between $10,000 and $15,000, Sparacino said.

Ray also brought the latest motorcycle innovation to Thunder Beach 2008. It is also a trike, but one radically different from the Hondas and Harleys that dominate the market.

Opening the cargo door to his trailer, Ray stepped up to a smooth, bulletshaped trike whose exterior resembled an open-cockpit aircraft fuselage.

"This is the Thoroughbred Stallion," he said. "It is almost as much an automobile as a motorcycle."

Unique features include a 3.2-liter engine used on the Ford Focus subcompact car, an automatic transmission, automobile drive train and heating and air conditioning.

With a top speed of 120 mph, the only thing slow about the Thoroughbred Stallion is the dealers' ability to deliver them.

"The waiting list is quite long," Ray said, noting that only 300 of the vehicles have been built.

At a suggested cost of $32,995, the Thoroughbred Stallion is competitive with a new trike conversion, Ray said.

Ray said the Thoroughbred Stallion is targeted, like the other trike conversions, at older motorcycle fans who are readjusting their activities.

"As people get older, they think (the trike) looks better and better," Ray said. "We're getting a lot of people who used to watch but then would say, 'Not for me now,' but as people get older, they think it looks better and better."

Both Ray and Sparacino said the trike conversion business has been booming in recent years.

"Our business is just about doubling every year," Ray said.

"About one-third of the Gold Wings and Valkyries out there today are trikes," Sparacino said.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0169-24952847