Vintage Thing No.102 - Lomax Super Vee

For Lomax, the Super Vee marked an entry into a whole new market (Photo: Lomax Motor Co.)

The Lomax Super Vee was a super three wheeler conceived by Nigel Whall who ran the Lomax Motor Co. Most Lomaxes were Citroen 2CV based but a handful had been built with air cooled Citroen GS and GSA four cylinder engines. A factory option by Lomax featuring even more serious performance seemed to make a lot of sense.

As Lomaxes looked similar to the classic Morgan vee-twin, a large vee-twin engine would be ideal. A US serviceman stationed in the UK told Nigel that the Nostalgia Cycle Inc of California made an air-cooled vee-twin 1543cc engine using some V8 Chevrolet parts. Called the Super Vee, this engine had been conceived as an alternative to hogged out Harley-Davidson engines and was intended to power kit built choppers.

On paper, this made a lot of sense. Chevy engine parts were cheap and the sheer torque of the engine promised excellent performance in a three-wheeler the weight of a Lomax. Estimated power was 90 bhp.

This is the Super Vee engine as installed in the chassis. Note the special Lomax plate at the front that enabled the engine to be turned through 180 degrees and coupled to a Citroen GS gearbox. (Photo : Lomax Motor Co.)

In 1990, Nigel imported and engine and mated it to a Citroen GS gearbox. This was not as easy as it sounds because the Super Vee engine had originally been designed to drive from the nearside when mounted in motorcycle frame. To fit the layout of a Super Lomax drive had to be taken from the other side.

The Super Vee chassis was a thing of beauty in itself (Photo : Lomax Motor Co.

)

The new design of engine deserved a new design of chassis and Dick Buckland - the man behind the Ford powered Buckland B3 - designed a full space frame with a sophisticated front suspension system featuring in board shock absorbers that lay horizontally over the clutch bellhousing. GS driveshafts and uprights were used but the wishbones were all new and featured anti-dive geometry. The overall design followed the lines pioneered by Morgan as interpreted by Lomax.

Christened the Lomax Super Vee, the prototype created a lot of interest and its design and build intimated at Lomax moving significantly up market. For instance there was a very nice external handbrake made out of stainless steel.

The Super Vee looked the part from every angle. That lovely stainless steel handbrake survived the ultimate failure of the project and lives on elsewhere but that - like so much on Engine Punk - is another story (Photo : Lomax Motor Co.)

Alas! - the Super Vee engine just did not run properly. The trike braked and cornered well but Lomax had nothing but trouble with the factory supplied engine, which was obviously still in want of serious development. In 1993, with a worsening dollar-pound exchange rate, the project was shelved and the kit car press never got to road test the Lomax Super Vee. The factory kept the prototype for static publicity purposes for a few years but ultimately it was broken up and sold to a fried of mine who...

....well that's another story and - happily - yet another Vintage Thing.