What I love about these designs Steve is that they were developed during the war when French civilians had little or no access to petrol and materials were in short supply. Necessity being the mother of invention and with bicycle based tech being easy to come by these kinds of simple vehicles were the natural result.
I'm reasonably certain that this particular wee car could be easily adapted to work as a three wheeler with bicycle pedals and having the motor up front and easily accessible would be a major plus as well.
My dear Intrepid Wheelwoman, between you, Silverbear, Tom, and Fishguts and, heck, pretty much everybody here, I have been sufficiently inspired to begin actively pursuing my next project. I intend to build a Cyclekart-inspired three wheeler. It will by no means count as a motorized bicycle, but this thread seems the best place to talk about it.
For more information on cyclekarts, I recommend these folks:
http://www.cyclekarts.com/
Below is one of many very rough thumbnail sketches of my idea. I'd be using a sectioned canoe and sheet aluminum for the body, steel box tubing for the frame, and the back part of a motorcycle for the engine/drive train. I have been planning out, on many many sheets of graph paper, the various methods of accomplishing this. I'm on a rigid budget, so this will likely require two or three years and more than one portion of future income tax refunds. But I have begun the planning, measuring, and logistics. I also plan to learn stick-welding soon. Building motorbikes has been a fantastic learning experience: it taught me many things, and showed me a bazillion other things that I don't know how to do yet. But that's okay, I'll learn.
