When you first see it, you notice the paint job.
After further inspection, you begin to appreciate the lines, form and design of the trike before you. The polished chrome on it reflects the big goofy grin on your face as you stare at it. You can’t help but notice how well it’s built, and you know that a lot of innovation and craftsmanship went into its creation.
It seems almost organic, like it might have just appeared one day from out of nowhere, fully formed and magnificent. You realize that what you’re looking at is truly something special.
If you’re a motorcycle enthusiast, your admiration deepens. There’s a 480 horsepower Corvette LS3 V8 engine mounted on it. You wonder what it would be like to have that kind of power at your disposal on a three-wheeled trike. What would it be like if you had 480 fire-breathing horses cinched up to your very own three-wheeled chariot, thundering down the road, your arms straining on the leads to keep the beasts galloping in unison, laying waste to all the miles between you and your destination.
You notice it has an automatic transmission just like in your car. Your dear old grandmother could operate the doggone thing, but she should really make sure what direction it’s pointed in if she decided to lay on the throttle, because you just know this thing can move.
It has comfortable seats, an impressive stereo, rear independent suspension with air ride and since it only weighs around 1,600 lbs., it has to be as nimble as a cat.
It’s an honest to goodness, authentic touring trike designed as if it were a performance trike.
Welcome to the world of Dave Libla and the crew at Challenger Motorcycles.
The bike in question is at Cypress Creek Motorsports on Highway 53 in Poplar Bluff, and it is definitely a tricked-out wonder of a trike.
Its red, white and blue flag-themed paint job, designed by Bradley Wilson at Bailey’s Auto Body in Poplar Bluff, seems to be alive, waving in the wind like Old Glory herself. The company that builds it is named after the Challenger space shuttle and the trike itself is named in honor of the spirit of its astronauts.
During Daytona Bike Week recently, the trike was entered in the first V8 Motorcycle Show held at OB’s Restaurant & Lounge in DeLand, Florida. Out of 70 or so entrants, it won best trike as well as Best Of Show.
It’s a Spirit V8 Trike and it was fabricated right here in Poplar Bluff by Libla and his crew.
The trike’s creation began in 2015.
Libla retired from the manufacturing industry and had a small side business in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he used conversion kits to change Harley Davidson and Honda Goldwing motorcycles from two wheelers to three wheelers.
“The things I learned during that process is that I never was really happy with something about a converted bike,” Libla said. “It didn’t quite meet what my expectations were.
“It would either be a little underpowered or the kit conversions weren’t to my expectations, any number of things that I wasn’t particularly happy about. I got interested in the quest for more power for the conversion of the trikes by adding a V8 engine, so we decided that we would just try to build our own, but with a clean slate, start from scratch.”
Libla had a particular goal in mind.
“One of the criteria for me is that I wanted to build a three-wheeled motorcycle with the V8 power that would be a good long distance, smooth, touring trike that you could ride comfortably, with power, and be safe to operate, all the things that we weren’t feeling like we were getting before,” he said.
That’s when Joe Zamora entered the picture.
Zamora started his career working at a parts store in Las Vegas and climbed his way up the ladder there before moving on to rebuilding and machining engines at a shop there. Libla purchased the company he worked for and the two of them set out to build the trike that Libla envisioned.
Libla considered staying in Las Vegas but decided getting back home to Poplar Bluff was what he really wanted to do, so Zamora and his family joined him.
Now it was time to get to work.
After setting up shop at Cypress Creek Motorsports they began the process of creating the Spirit V8 Trike.
They designed and fabricated a frame and tweaked it until it was just what they were looking for, something that would be safe and support the Chevrolet Corvette LS3 engine that would power it.
Father and son Eugene and Michael Ballew came aboard to contribute their talents. Michael has been around motorcycles his whole life. He knows his way around one and does a little bit of everything in the shop. His interest in motorcycles started when he was young, very young in fact. His crib sat in the corner of his father’s Harley dealership so it’s kind of in his blood.
Eugene Ballew’s interest came out of necessity. He says that he ran his first bike a little too hard, and a little too fast, and to use his own words “locked it up.” When told it would take three months to fix, he had the dealership give him the warrantied parts and he fixed it himself because he wasn’t about to wait that long. After decades of experience, the man can fix almost anything on a motorcycle and if you need something fabricated, everyone at the shop will tell you that Eugene can build it.
Challenger Motorcycles offer the Spirit V8 for sale and each one is built right here in Poplar Bluff.
Brackets, fittings, footboards, everything that isn’t stock are fabricated in the shop.
Michael Ballew says, “What we’re doing is like a custom bike build that you might see on TV that we take into a production line. We want a production bike with some custom elements on them. One guy might be doing something one day and then another guy might be doing that same thing two weeks from now, it just depends how it all fits together.”
According to Zamora, the process is a team effort.
“There’s a lot of parts on the bike that are purchased. We had to apply those parts to our design and being able to make that happen is a huge feat,” Zamora said. “In some of these cases, some of the stuff Gene has come up with, Michael’s come up with, stuff I’ve come up with, there’s a lot of engineering going on and it’s because we’ve got people with experience, and it definitely shows in these bikes.”
Libla adds, “The real art form comes from the hands that are doing the work. I have this picture in my head of what I like to see. Whether it’s a design issue or whether it’s a mechanical issue, any number of things, I have to be able to translate the visual that’s in my head over to somebody that can actually do it right and they have to be able to read my mind, which is not always easy to do.”
Eugene Ballew sums it all up, “I think it’s kind of nice that Dave wants to make these here in Poplar Bluff. He could make them anywhere he wanted to, but to make it here Poplar Bluff is pretty nice. I think it’s something that you can brag about in this area.”
If you want to know more about the Challenger Motorcycles Spirit V8 Trike, you can visit their website at https://www.challengermotorcycles.com/.