You’ve doubtless heard the term superbike before, what you’re looking at here is a Scorpion P6 “supertrike” – a high-performance three-wheeled car powered by a 126 bhp Kawasaki Ninja ZX6R engine.
Although three-wheeled vehicles like this may look a little awkward at first they can actually make a lot of sense. As they have three wheels rather than four they can be registered as motorcycles, which means they don’t have to adhere to the long list of regulations applied to four-wheeled automobiles.
Fast Facts – The Scorpion P6 “Supertrike”
- The Scorpion P6 is a reverse trike developed by Scorpion Motorsports out of Miami, Florida. It’s road legal in the United States and in the United Kingdom, and a number of other countries.
- Each P6 is built around a tubular steel space frame with an aluminum semi-monocoque elements and a GRP body, they have Formula 1-style pushrod front suspension, a mid-mounted superbike engine, and a single rear wheel on a motorcycle swing arm with a monoshock.
- Scorpion Motorsports is no longer in business however when they were operational they sold the P6 in either kit or turnkey form, and you could pay extra for the turbocharged engine option.
- The performance of the turbo ZX-6R engine version was blistering, with the 0 – 60 mph dash completed in 3.5 seconds, 0 – 100 mph in 10 seconds, and it’s said to be capable of 1.5 G cornering.
Weird & Wonderful – Cars With Three Wheels
Three-wheeled cars are a bit of an historical anomaly, they first appeared around the turn of the 20th century and despite their unusual nature they’ve refused to go extinct. Newly designed takes on the concept keep reappearing and often making it into production, albeit usually not for long.
The lightweight chassis of the Scorpion P6 includes both tubular steel and aluminum semi-monocoque elements, with F1-style pushrod front suspension and Wilwood brakes.
The most famous three-wheelers in history are undoubtably those made by the Morgan Motor Company in England.
They started out making three-wheelers all the way back in 1909 before slowly transitioning to four-wheeled cars, though they do occasionally bring new three-wheelers to market like the new Morgan Super 3.
Due to the fact that motorcycles can be fitted with sidecars, vehicles with three-wheels are typically classed as motorcycles for tax and registration purposes. This has meant that they can be built and sold far more cheaply which was their initial selling point.
People also fell in love with the pure, analogue driving experience, and three-wheeled cars have become cult classics with a rabid fanbase.
The Scorpion P6
The Scorpion P6 was developed by the team at Scorpion Motorsports in Miami, Florida to be a true 21st century take on the under represented high performance three-wheeler genre.
They created an all-new tubular steel chassis with aluminum semi-monocoque elements and a fiberglass body, with F1-style pushrod front suspension, a swing arm rear with a monoshock, and a mid-mounted superbike engine supplied by the Kawasaki Ninja ZX6R.
The single-seater (monoposto) cockpit offers a driving experience similar to a Formula Ford-type open wheeled race car.
When ordering your P6 new you could choose between a kit build option or a turnkey car, with both naturally aspirated and turbocharged versions on offer producing 126 bhp and 150+ bhp respectively.
The Scorpion P6 weighs in at just 730 lbs (331 kgs), a mere fraction the weight of a standard sports car. Performance is brisk, the turbo variant can do the 0 – 60 mph sprint in 3.5 seconds and the 0 – 100 mph in 10 seconds.
Wilwood brakes are fitted up front and the P6 can be fitted with aerodynamically active adjustable front and rear wings. Sadly the company that created the P6, Scorpion Motorsports, is no longer in business so the only way to get one is to buy a lightly used example like the one pictured in this article.
This Scorpion P6 has just 100 miles on the odometer (160 kms) and it’s powered by the reliable and fuss-free naturally aspirated version of the Kawasaki Ninja ZX6R engine producing 126 bhp.
If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing on Collecting Cars. It’s currently being auctioned live online out of Dundee in Scotland.
Images courtesy of Collecting Cars
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
