Confusing terms
Reading your features, programmes for pioneer car and motorcycle events and adverts culled from motoring and motorcycling publications from the Edwardian days, I’m confused with what is a threeor four-wheel tandem and what is a tricycle or quadricycle. Stan Clarkson, email.
Easy bit first. As we all know, tricycles have three wheels, thus a later Victorian or early Edwardian motorised tricycle is just that, regardless of where in the frame its engine is fitted. And, likewise, motorised quadricycles have four wheels. Generally, pioneer tricycles don’t have the facility to carry a passenger, but if converted, usually by means of a two-wheeled forecar mounted to the vehicle’s front in place of the front forks, this conversion bestows a fourth wheel to the device and it becomes a quadricycle.
However, not all such fourwheeled vehicles have passengercarrying facilities, but most do, and, again, by means of a forecar-type seat, either wicker or upholstered.
Now the harder part… In cycling, a tandem is a cycle made for two – one seated behind the other – but has two wheels in line, unless it is a tandem tricycle, that is a tricycle for two, with the passenger usually seated behind the passenger, with both pedalling.
The tandem adverts you refer to are for three- and four-wheel motor tricycle-like framed vehicles, offering seating for two, usually by a forecar seat, not what you expect, but what the then makers chose to name such.