We’ve been hung up on the military vehicle genre for the last few Freaks of the Week, but that’s because there’s so much weird and cool stuff out there to look it. Here’s one more: the German Kettenkrad, or as we like to call it, the doomsday motorcycle. This is what you get when you cross a tank with a trike.
The vehicle was originally intended to be a light tractor for troops to use for pulling cannons or other guns through tough terrain. Its major design feature was that it would fit in the cargo hold of a plane and could be transported with relative ease and dropped into remote locations.
You’re wondering how the guy driving or riding this thing steered and we wondered the same thing until we learned that the handle bars were linked into the track brakes and moving the bars would engage the brake on the desired side, causing the vehicle to steer.
NSU built these things and they were powered by a water-cooled, 1.4 liter Opel four banger. The motor made 70 hp and was able to move the tank/trike with aplomb as it could go more than 40 mph. It had three forward speeds, reverse, and a normal single-plate clutch. It weighed in at 3,400 pounds.
The machine could climb great angles and was used pretty extensively on the eastern front of WWII. Through the course of their production, which ran even after the war ended (for use on farms), more than 8,000 were produced.
We want one bad.
