Tricky Dick's Cagiva WMX 200
One of the rarest three-wheelers ever built. Maybe 65 ever made.
Jerry Illiard ran Tricky Dick's Inc. out of Shelbina, Missouri, a small outfit specializing in racing trikes. In 1984, he took the Italian Cagiva WMX motocross motorcycle and converted it into something entirely different.
The base was Cagiva's WMX, which despite being called a "250" actually displaced around 190cc. Liquid-cooled two-stroke single. 36mm Dell'Orto carburetor. Six-speed gearbox. Around 38 horsepower. Most of the original motorcycle remained intact, frame, shocks, engine.
Everything else was fabricated or borrowed. Rear fenders from a Kawasaki KXT250 Tecate. Front fender courtesy of Honda's ATC 250R. The rear axle assembly, wheels, and conversion hardware were hand-built or sourced from the trike racing underground.
Price in 1984: $2,638. For that money, you got an Italian-American hybrid that could tear up the track against Hondas and Kawasakis. Different. Exotic. Fast enough.
Then came the 1987 consent decree. Three-wheelers became endangered species overnight. Tricky Dick's shut down just as things were getting interesting.
Production numbers according to the company's own shipping records: 65 WMX 200s. Four WMX 125s. Two WMX 500s. That's 71 machines total.
Today they're collector's items few people have ever heard of. Red and green plastics. That elephant logo. Italian two-stroke bark. A footnote in ATV history that most enthusiasts will never see in person.
Young, wild, and race ready. Until the government said otherwise.
