This WW2 fire-fighting trike is the strangest, coolest thing we've seen all week

Friday, 20 August 2021

This awesome three-wheeler fought fires around Japan and Malaysia.

During the early 1940s, pretty much every country that had manufacturing capabilities was working hard for their respective war efforts. Some were building planes, guns and tanks while others focused on the locals.

That’s where this 1941 Kurogane Model 1 Fire Trikes comes in, a three-wheeled firefighter used in Japan and Malaysia.

It doesn’t seem like the actual firefighting capabilities of the trike are working yet but the visual restoration is beautiful.

The story starts back in 1923, when a massive earthquake demolished the city of Yokohama, followed by tsunamis reaching as high as 40 feet and fires caused by overturned cooktops and ruptured gas mains, including a fire tornado.

It was later called the Great Kanto Earthquake and, after the dust settled, resulted in around 140,000 deaths.

Interestingly, the gauges are in English, which could be a byproduct of Malaysia being a British colony at the time.

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Afterwards, Yokohama and Toyko, which was also battered by the quakes and fires, needed vehicles to help rebuild. Around the same time, Japan’s government wanted to bolster its motorcycle industry, instead of relying on American, Italian and British imports as it did previously.

Tricycles were already popular in Japan as many could be used without a driving licence (only required for vehicles with a cylinder capacity above 750cc) and could easily access many areas, especially considering how the rail tracks would have been damaged in the earthquake.

It took a few years, but eventually, the Kurogane Fire Trike came to be, designed to be a local response unit for fires. According to Motorworld, a Russian motorcycle museum that is restoring the trike, it uses a transverse-mounted 1100cc V-twin engine of unknown origin and could well be the last one in existence. Many were destroyed in the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Apparently, this particular model fought fires in Japan and Malaysia, which was where it was found. Interestingly, the instruments are all labelled in English, which would likely have been a product of the move to Malaysia, as the country was colonised by Britain until 1957. English would have then been spoken commonly, much more so than in Japan at the time.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much more information available about the trike, But, with any luck, Motorworld will finish its restoration soon and offer more interesting stories about the fire trike.