Shortly after I started collecting exotic, rare, and odd cars I saw the Merlin. My first "odd" car was the Corbin Sparrow. While trying to
research that car I saw that Corbin had many other vehicles on the drawing board and even made some prototypes of some. It seems that
when they went out out of business any chance of having one of the Merlins went with them. After a few years I found a Harley dealer in
Oregon that had a new one for sale!! So I bought it. It turns out that Merlin Motors had shipped a Merlin to this dealer with the
guarantee that they would buy it back if it didn't sell. The company went out of business before they could return it to get their money back.
Lucky for me.
Transporting cars are always a problem, this was no exception. Because it is so rare I wanted it moved in an enclosed transporter.
Many car transporters won't ship a three wheeled vehicle since the ramps are set up for two rows of wheel in line front and rear. What do you
do with the rear wheel in the middle of the track? There are a few companies that can do this that I've used in the past. I decided to try
a new company this time and save $800 in transport fees. It's a bike transport company that has moved many trikes (which of course this is).
To save on costs they use a "hub" method where they pick up several bikes in an area and bring them back to the "hub". When they get enough
bikes going to the area where your bike is also going to they send a semi in that direction. Well first there was the major snow fall on the
west coast. There were some days when the semi only made it 17 miles. When he was on his way back to the hub his transmission blew up. Such
is life.
It was finally delivered at 9PM the day before I was going on a vacation. It was raining out but I drove it anyway. It was delivered in great
shape. The driver told me that the people at the depot were trying to figure out how much it cost. The range they guessed was from $50,000
to $200,000!