De Dion-Bouton tricycle

The De Dion-Bouton motor tricycle was a light three-wheeled motor vehicle built in France from 1897 and the most successful motor vehicle in Europe until about 1901, with some 15,000 sold. It carried the fast-running single-cylinder four-stroke engine that Georges Bouton had ready for production in 1895, which turned at around 1,500 revolutions a minute when contemporary engines managed between 240 and 750, and which became the model for early motorcycle engines. The first production tricycle weighed just under 80 kilograms and gave 1.5 horsepower from 211 cc; the last model of 1904 used a 955 cc engine of about 8 horsepower. Makers in Belgium, Germany, England, France, Switzerland and the United States built it under licence or copied it with slight changes, and in 1902 Georges Osmont set a speed record of 109.1 km/h on one at Nice.