Trident Micro Car Is The (Most Recent) One That Got Away

Finding affordable microcar projects like this Taylor Dunn Trident that sold on Ebay yesterday is a rare occurrence. Spending time lusting after obscure Ebay finds with regret after they have found a new home is unfortunately anything but a rare occurrence.

If yesterday's Tatra 8x8 is one the biggest ways to guarantee yourself a ticket to project car hell, this Trident micro car is likely the smallest. Produced by the Taylor Dunn Company when microcars were popular in the late 50s and early 60s, this microcar was powered by an electric motor. We say was, because judging from the condition of this Trident, this little three wheeler hasn't moved under its own power in quite some time.

While they are technically considered cars, I would describe this Trident as more of a golf cart with style than a viable automobile. The Trident was the one of the less usable products of the microcar craze, which says a lot. Perhaps it was the Trident's unusual styling, the fact it was not gas that made it go or the fact it needed everything, but in retrospect it appears I overlooked one of the cheaper ways to get into a microcar.

Ever since I was a young car lover, I have wanted a microcar. While I still couldn't tell you exactly why, it is impossible to argue that the bizarre desire was there and still is. Even as cars with big fins and bigger V8s pushed my dream of microcar ownership to the back burner, I still obsessively scanned car classifieds hoping to come across a rogue Goggomobil (my microcar of choice). When I have come across them in the US a handful of times, the asking price reflected their rarity and fast increasing desirability.

A couple years ago a Goggomobil van sold for a whopping $88,000 at RM Monterey. It was around this time when I realized the only way I might stumble in microcar ownership was to drag home a project and resurrect it in slightly bastardized form. Although I always envisioned stumbling across a Goggomobil in a barn, it was yesterday afternoon shortly after this Trident sold for $451 when I realized this could have been the opportunity for microcar ownership I've been waiting for. Either way, until I find the impossibly affordable Goggomobil of my dreams or I move on to my next fleeting automotive fascination (clearly the latter), I am left to wonder about the project car hell that could have been with Trident.

[Ebay]