Elvis Presley's 1975 Super Cycle Stinger VW Trike

Sometime in the summer of 1975 Elvis bought his second trike. Some accounts say that he initially saw one around town driven by Marvin “Shack” Shackleford, a former partner at Super Cycle in Memphis first, but Ron Elliott there remembers him first coming in on his Rupp Centaur with his girlfriend Linda Thompson, asking if there was anything they could do to give it more power. He said the motor was less than adequate for a two-seater and though they could improve it, he recommended one of the Volkswagen powered trikes they built there from kits. The first of two that Elvis would buy there was a Stinger, built from a kit obtained from “Trikes By Stires” in Garden Grove, CA.

Super Cycle in Memphis was started in 1971 by the Elliott brothers, Lew and Ron, and Shack as a motorcycle parts and custom service shop. At one time they had ten people working in the shop in the early seventies when bikes and trikes were becoming the rage. There were several manufacturers offering kits and completed VW based trikes but “Trikes By Stires” was one of the largest and, according to their literature, the only licensed as an Original Equipment.