Roth's Experiments

When Ed Roth built each new custom vehicle (car, bike, or trike), they weren't just frivolous show vehicles. They were also experiments for new ideas or bulding techniques like using fiberglass for building the body for the Outlaw and then applying these successes on future vehicles.

The California Cruiser was such a vehicle and became the starting point for other V8 trikes and kits. 

Roth didn't care that the Mail Box used a fairly underpowered Crosley 4 cylinder engine. The main idea was to see if a water cooled car engine would work with the radiator mounted in the rear. It did so the next project was to apply this knowlegde to a larger engine for the California Cruiser. One lesson learned was to never again build a body that cut off your side and rear field of vsion.

The Candy Wagon was his first experiment with trikes and although also underpowered it was built for long hauls, so it used the large fiberglass seat/body as the fuel tank.

Roth's California Cruiser The Article

Here's the article from the December 1969 issue of Choppers Magazine featuring the finished project. Click on each image to enlarge and read.

 This is the prototype and grand daddy of all the Roth/Allen V8 Trikes. It used a small aluminum Olds V8 instead of the Ford 289 used in Dick Allen's and the kits.

In a lot of ways it is also the grand daddy of all V8 trikes, as builders to this day still build frames eeriely close to the original. For the Kits, Dick supplied the frames (and engine mounts), while Roth supplied the fiberglass bodies.



Roth's California Cruiser

Ed Roth's V8 powered California Cruiser was the prototype for the Ed Roth/Dick Allen joint venture Cobra Trike kits. I'll be posting the article from this issue soon.