Three Wheels on My Wagon…

The Scootacar was promoted as having room for a driver and groceries, but in practice, it was one or the other

by Gary Anderson

Sometimes I wonder how the British ever managed to produce distinguished automobiles when the government threw so many obstacles in the path of the motor industry.

Perhaps the most significant was the motor vehicle tax policy with its quixotic exemptions, arcane methods of calculating horsepower, and arbitrary categorization.

The most interesting unintended consequence of these policies was the wide variety of successful and not-so-successful three-wheel automobiles that were produced before and after WWII. Not that three-wheelers don’t have lineage—Karl Benz’s vehicle, an 1885 invention, was a trike.

Three-wheel automobiles have been part of the mainstream transportation system in England since at least 1910, when Morgan began production. The British government may have felt that motorcycles could reduce congestion, but economics played a big part. Before WWI, an automobile cost several years’ salary for a working man; a cheap and...