Can-Am Ryker Rally Edition: The Most Fun You Can Have on Three Wheels
🏍Make/Model: Can-Am Ryker Rally Edition | Price: $10,999 | Engine: Rotax 900 ACE inline 3 with electronic fuel injection | Peak Torque: 56 lb-ft | Horsepower: 82 | Transmission: Continuously Variable Automatic | Front Suspension: Double wishbone with KYB HPG coil-overs, 6.38 inches of travel | Rear Suspension: KYB HPG 40mm with 6.89 inches of travel | Dry Weight: 627 lb | Ground Clearance: 4.4 inches
Rally racing is one of the most challenging forms of motorsport. A driver and navigator blaze down actual public roads—closed, of course—at the ragged edge of control, the navigator calling out the turns and the driver reacting in real time as the road rushes ahead like a video playing at 8x speed. Rallies take place on all sorts of surfaces, from asphalt to snow, but the sport is synonymous with dirt. And so rally cars are optimized for that environment: Knobby tires, beefy suspension, and skid plates are universal must-haves. If that sort of equipment sounds awfully familiar, it’s because rally culture bred the crossover: A Toyota RAV4 is just a Corolla Hatchback that’s built for the Acropolis Rally.
Can-Am, maker of the Maverick side-by-side lineup, knows how to build machines that can play in the dirt. But it had never produced an off-pavement variant of its street-legal Spyder three-wheelers. The Ryker, like the Spyder, has two wheels up front and a single drive wheel in the back, but it’s available in an off-pavement model: the Rally Edition.
The centerpiece of the Rally is the KYB HPG 40mm remote-reservoir coil-over shock. A knob next to the seat offers four-position compression adjustment so you can set the suspension to match the terrain. The front suspension is also KYB, with adjustable preload. The Rally isn’t meant for trail riding—its ground clearance is only 4.4 inches—but the suspension is set up to take some hits. All-terrain tires, a skid plate, and aluminum hand guards complete the look.
For a power plant, the Rally uses the same three-cylinder Rotax 900 available in the street Ryker, but the electronic stability control includes a Rally Mode. You still can’t completely disable the electronic minders, but Rally Mode lets you drift the rear end while getting some wheelspin. It’s fun, but it’s also useful in off-road situations, where spinning the rear tire and maintaining momentum can keep you from getting stuck. No, this isn’t supposed to be the kind of machine you take out on the dunes or the trail, but it’s surprisingly capable in the woods if you keep that ground clearance figure in mind.
And, as with vehicles like the Ford Raptor and Chevy Colorado ZR2, the Ryker’s off-road suspension pays on-road dividends. If your suspension is designed for the rigors of unpaved terrain, it’ll be that much more comfortable surfing our crumbling infrastructure. Which is extra important on a trike, because there’s no avoiding a pothole—even if you miss it with the front tires, that rear one’s going to mule-kick the seat. Aboard the Ryker Rally, you worry less about that than you would on a Spyder. Roadkill, though: still a problem.
So why would you get the Rally Edition instead of the street model? Well, why wouldn’t you? You might never take your RAV4 into the woods, either. But it’s nice to know you could.
This article appeared in the October 2019 issue of Popular Mechanics. You can subscribe here.
You Might Also Like
