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My wife would like a 3 wheeled recumbent, but I can’t see how we can transport one with a normal car.

I can put my bike on a rack or the roof, but all the recumbent I have seen are too large to transport.

What solutions have people come up with?

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  • Is there any further information you'll need for a proper answer to this? – Neil Fein Sep 14 '10 at 1:20
  • Not answering your question directly, but forget the car and ride the `bent instead ? Put the ride on a trailer and tow that? – Criggie♦ Dec 13 '15 at 5:31
  • This would depend on what you call a normal car, and how big you are. In my Nissan Sentra, I can barely get my road bike in (58cm) and I'm 5'11". If you had a Ford Fiesta or something, there may be problems with that. – Batman Dec 13 '15 at 15:36
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If your car doesn't have a trailer hitch on it, you can have one installed and purchase a "trike and bike" rack that mounts in the trailer hitch receiver:

Hitch Rider Trike-N-Bike™ hitch mounted racks transport a trike and bike at the same time. Wheel holder and bike support arm styles are available for the bike carrier position. The rack fits both 1 1/4" and 2" vehicle receiver hitches (patented).

rack picture

My inlaws ride recumbent bikes and had a hitch installed on their Toyota Camry and purchased a double-trike rack.

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Firstly I've seen a variety of trikes on the roof of a fairly wide variety of cars - hmm, I've carried one on the roof of mine along with two recumbent bikes, so its perfectly possible to carry a trike on a car. The challenge - as it has always been with recumbents - is that you may not be able to do so with a single standard piece of kit. From memory wheels either side of a set of roof bars being quite a common solution (challenge being getting the thing up onto the roof in the first place).

After that it rather depends on the trike - there are an ever increasing number of folding (well collapsible) trikes - the latest being HP Velotechnik's Scorpion FX which is picutured being loaded into the boot of a Smartcar here: http://www.hpvelotechnik.com/produkte/scorpionfx/index_e.html

Similarly Hase have taken steps to make it easy to break a KettWiesel down for transport.

Hmm, here's the Challenge variation on the theme: http://www.challenge-recumbents.com/index.php?language=en&selection=trike-alize-en

with, guess what... a picture of the bike going into the back of a SmartCar - so clearly the solution to the problem is to buy the right car (-:

Pragmatically, if you can find your way to an HPV club event (e.g those run by the BHPC in the UK) you'll be able to see and ask people who will have addressed this problem.

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  • I will have a look at the folders, I can image being able to safely get a tricycle on the roof of a car single handed. – Ian Sep 6 '10 at 8:35
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I've had good luck strapping my TerraTrike to the top of a Matrix. We have a roof rack, which makes it easier. But before that I just fed the straps through the doors. The trickiest part is that at highway speeds, there's a lot of stuff that can fly off. (I lost a fender that way.)

So my procedure is

  • Put the seat back as far down as possible, to reduce drag.
  • Strap down fenders and anything else that's loose with velcro.
  • Put cargo straps through the trike tires to strap the car to the roof.
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Greenspeed GT3 (Australia), HP Velotechnik Scorpion FX and ICE(UK) make folding tadpole recumbent trikes, which can fit in the back of a reasonably sized car. TriSled (Australia) make one with a break in the frame that serves the same purpose.

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