Andrew English's column

Three wheels on my wagon, went the old Bacharach/Hilliard song sung by the New Christy Minstrels. I’ve got a feeling we’ll be hearing more of that tune in the future. Mention three-wheelers nowadays, and you’ll likely be thinking of Del Boy Trotter’s Reliant Regal van, or a Seventies’ orange Bond Bug. But these machines have a long and very honourable history – and now they’re coming back.

In the earliest days, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot’s 1769 steam wagon and Karl Benz’s 1885 Patent Motor-Wagen were three-wheelers with single front rims and twin rears. This was not the configuration chosen by HFS Morgan for his first model, the 1909 Peugeot-powered Morgan Runabout. HFS chose what has become recognised as the most stable of all such layouts; two rims ahead, with the engine out front driving the single rear wheel. So stable in fact, that in 1929, Gwenda Stewart set an hour-long 101mph record in her Morgan at Montlhéry in France.

When BMW licensed manufacture of the 1955 BMW/Isetta bubble car, it adopted probably one of the least stable layouts, with twin wheels at the front and a 600cc motorcycle engine at the back on one side driving the rear rim. In 1991, BMW tried again with its original C1 concept, a tilting pod-style three-wheeler (much like the Mercedes-Benz 1997 F300 Life Jet), and it has recently returned to this idea. The CLEVER uses two computer-controlled hydraulic actuators to tilt the cabin up to 45 degrees in corners, which alters its centre of gravity and keeps it from tipping over. It has a 230cc, single-cylinder compressed natural gas engine, and achieves 60mph and about 111mpg.

BMW also had a hand in last year’s Peugeot 20Cup, a two-seat three-wheeler concept using the four-cylinder turbo petrol engine jointly produced by the duo. Fun is the name of the game here, with an 18-inch rear tyre and racy looks. Peugeot says it will never produce the 20Cup, which leaves the way clear for VW to sell its GX3 trike concept to Californian kids with a taste for flies in their teeth. This modern interpretation of a Morgan Aero was shown at January’s LA Motor Show. It has side-by-side seats, with two front wheels and a single 18-inch rear. It is powered by a 125bhp petrol engine, which will let it sprint from 0-62mph in 5.7 seconds, and should cost less than £10,000.

Actually, the 20Cup and the GX3 are pretty slow for three-wheelers. In 1988, racer and writer Mark Hales tested Phil Spencer’s fearsome alcohol-fuelled Japanese-engined Morgan Aero, which lapped Mallory Park faster than a Sierra Cosworth racing saloon. Also, Peugeot, VW and BMW have never understood the dynamic instabilities of these vehicles. Instead, they’ve used modern tyres and electronic technology to restrict the dynamic envelope.

Although all the big makers think they have reinvented the three-wheeler, actually it never went away. Every few years, they remember the genre and produce an eye-catching concept to steal show headlines. VW’s GX3 might just be the first production model from a major firm, but don’t hold your breath. For now, I’m just singing: “Higgity, haggity hoggety, high. Pioneers, they never say die...”