Tricycle Fetish Blog

A TricycleFetish.com visitor sent us this photo, asking for info. The visitor though it would date to about 1935. It would seem that that age is within reason. The velomobile type pedal vehicle has a horn, drum brakes, brake light, headlights. Velomobiles or Velo-cars came into use around the 1930′s and were popular during World War II when gasoline was hard to find, and afford. The model and brand of this unit are unknown. Many had bodies and fenders and some even had roofs.

Q: Can you tell me the name of the manufacturer and style name of this tricycle, and its approximate value? We may wish to sell it, can you suggest where (website/publication, etc.) we could advertise it for sale?  I have done searches on the internet, but have not found a picture of any other tricycles that look like this one.  Teresa

A: You have a late 1950′s era Murray Supersonic Jet ride-on pedal plane.  This type of toy isn’t normally considered a tricycle.  It’s more of a pedal plane or a ride-on toy in general.  It’s sort of built the same way as a pedal tractor with its chain drive.  This was a toy designed by Viktor Schreckengost and over the years there were some changes.  The exact year is unknown.  If you had catalogs from each year around the late 1950′s, you might be able to pinpoint it based on design and paint scheme, but the exact year really isn’t important.

As far as selling it goes…  I would think that there are some pedal car sites that would have classified ads.  Probably the easiest way would be Craigslist.  It’s free and a lot of collectors search for items there.  If that doesn’t work there’s always eBay, you just have to pay pretty high fees and deal with all of the eBay hassles.