This Homemade Steampunk Roadster Is Part Harley-Davidson, Part Smart Car, And Was Supposed To Lean Like A Motorcycle

The Smart Fortwo isn’t usually on the shortlist of donor vehicles for a custom project. As much as I love the little cars, they aren’t all that fast, aren’t very powerful, and their transmissions make most stereotypical car enthusiasts cringe. Yet, that didn’t stop the man who finished this roadster project. This is the Hamrhed by Puniwai Design, and it was supposed to be a leaning trike that looked like a vintage racecar with a steampunk touch. Then, someone bolted half of a Smart Fortwo onto its back.

This creation was sent to me by reader Roni. This vehicle was recently covered by Daily Turismo, which wrote about its appearance on Facebook Marketplace. That article had zero real details about the roadster itself, other than the fact that its powertrain came from a 2010 Smart Fortwo. But I couldn’t just leave it at that.

Through a deep examination of the few photos in the Facebook listing, I figured it out. This car, the Hamrhed, was the beginning of a big idea. It’s a steampunk-style all-metal car that’s supposed to lean like motorcycles can and was meant to be the first generation of a futuristic, innovative car built in California. Sadly, this car of the future is also sort of stuck in time.

From A Beloved Designer

The Hamrhed was the brainchild of graphic designer and engineer Brent Puniwai, who passed away in early 2024. From what I’ve been able to find on Brent, he was the vice president of the Kern River Valley Art Association (KRVAA) non-profit. The KRVAA serves as the region’s hub for the arts, promoting arts education for youth and adults. The organization also works with industrial design, exposing Kern River Valley residents to welding, computer-aided design, blacksmithing, routing, carving, and pretty much anything else you can do with your hands.

Puniwai was the mind behind the organization’s BigFoot FilmCamp. This is a summer camp where youth learn how to write, film, act in, edit, and then publish their own short films in only four days. When Puniwai wasn’t helping advance the arts while dressed up as Sasquatch, he was famous in his community as a charismatic visionary who turned wild ideas into reality. He once turned a carburetor into a coffee pot and created pirate and steampunk-inspired objects. A lot of his ideas involved elaborate, metal contraptions.

The Hamrhed

His magnum opus was probably the Hamrhed. According to old posts on his Facebook page, the Hamrhed project began in roughly the early 2010s. Puniwai had big plans for this vehicle. At first, he imagined an electric three-wheel vehicle with an enclosed cabin and a tilting mechanism. In concept, this wasn’t much different than a Carver or a GM Lean Machine.

Puniwai launched his own design studio to house the project called Puniwai Design, and posted an image that illustrated what Puniwai was originally going for:

Early on in the design process, Puniwai decided to power his project with a Triumph Speed Triple with a 1050cc engine. Puniwai said this engine, which made 128 HP when it launched in 2005, would have doubled the speed and range of the Hamrhed. However, the actual Triumph Speed Triple that Puniwai obtained was an older model with a 955cc engine with 118 horses on tap.

The Hamrhed test-bed vehicle was a complex creation. It was built in two halves, with the front half housing an elaborate suspension system, seating, and instrumentation. The rear half was just the motorcycle with its bodywork deleted and the fork permanently implanted into the front half.

The front half was built out of steel tubing, which isn’t all that wild. But it what was weird was what Puniwai had going on up front. He wanted his trike to lean just as much as a motorcycle. To facilitate this, he designed a tilt system that consists of a tower that rotates.

Attached to the tower are the vehicle’s front struts, which then feed into control arms. Those are attached to a hub that allows the wheels to lean over in the direction the body is.

If that sounds extremely confusing, it is, so just watch a video of the mechanism in action (click here if you can’t see the embed):

Puniwai said that this would be powered by a hydraulic system. Another video shows Puniwai “steering” the lean system through aircraft-like rudder pedals. The result, Puniwai said, was 43.3 degrees of articulation in the front end.

Another distinctive part of the front end is the wheels. Puniwai never said how big they are, but he did post this picture that used a bottle of beer for scale. The wheels also had a mounting system with long spacers. Puniwai’s logic was that this was a testbed, and having the spacers allowed for a variable wheel offset for testing.

Through some examination of the photos, I’ve determined that the wheels are shod in Vee Rubber VRM-302 Monster tires in a tall 120/50R26 size. Vee Rubber says these tires tend to be used in custom choppers, and they can cost you about $225 each. That answers how big the wheels are, too.

Stopping the whole rig, at least up front, are calipers meant for a Harley-Davidson. Pictured above is one of the spindles.

Everything Was Elaborate And Weird

Behind the front end was another bizarre creation. Puniwai took note that a lot of the existing three-wheel vehicles on the market are sort of hard to get in and out of. To fix that, he built a flexible aluminum structure for the steering wheel and instrument cluster to bolt onto. When you want to get out or get in, you just rotate the whole Erector set up. Apparently, it took a few versions before Puniwai found one that he wanted.

Never truly being satisfied with the build is also why the Hamrhed took years to come close to completion. Puniwai would weld something up, think of something better, and then do it all over again.

This was his explanation behind the parts that bolted the motorcycle half to the front half of the Hamrhed:

I installed the triple trees backwards (three-holed dealie that on a normal motorcycle holds the front forks and wheel on) to shorten the wheelbase. Unfortunately, I discovered that the upper triple tree clamp now interferes with the fuel tank placement. I’m pretty much committed to the triple tree reversal (flipple-tree™), so I designed a new one last night and am now awaiting its arrival.

Which brings us to the behind the seat roll hoop: I would have been happy with a simple 1 1/2″ or 1 3/4″ round tubular hoop. Unfortunately, my 180 degree minimum bend is 14″ id, I need a 6 3/4″ id bend. While, I’m sure that can be fabricated, but that particular custom one-off would be a budget buster. So, I overengineered a fairly gaudy alternative made from two flat plates separated by 3/4″ standoffs and connected by 1/2″ stainless cap head bolts -it’ll be both fine, inexpensive, and a headscratcher.

Puniwai also said that the hydraulic system could get the Hamrhed to lean to a full 35 degrees of tilt in only 1.5 seconds. To ensure that the hydraulic system doesn’t do that, he installed a throttle to modulate tilt speed and a magnetic reed sensor to stop the system from tilting once the vehicle is upright.

What I’m getting at here is that this machine was properly wild. Puniwai even gave up on the idea of making an enclosed vehicle and embraced the open cockpit. As for the design, Puniwai ditched his original idea for an enclosed vehicle and instead decided to make the Hamrhed look like a vintage racecar. Of course, he then added his steampunk touch to it, too. The body is made out of lightweight aluminum, and the interior was trimmed with teak bars.

Sadly, updates on the vehicle ceased in 2022. Then, in early 2024, Puniwai passed from lung cancer. Some of the final images of the project do show the Triumph attached to the back of the trike.

The Hamrhed Today

So, it’s a bit unclear what happened between then and now. Today, a seller from Facebook says they picked the Hamrhed up from an estate sale in its current state. The motorcycle drivetrain is gone, and in its place is the entire rear subframe from a 2010 Smart Fortwo.

When I say it’s the entire subframe, I mean every part has been carried over from the engine cradle to the DeDion tube axle. It’s pretty much as if someone gutted an unsuspecting Smart and then slapped it onto the back of the Hamrhed. The only part of the rear end that isn’t from the donor Smart is the radiator. But it’s all there, from the 999cc Mitsubishi triple with 70 HP on deck to the transmission most people hate.

What’s interesting is that whoever continued the project kept Puniwai’s motorcycle instrument cluster and motorcycle controls. The current seller of the vehicle does not indicate if it runs. Instead, they just say that it “needs finished.” I have so many questions here. The Smart transmission is computerized. So, is the computer present and hooked up? Does it use Smart’s ignition system? Who finished it? Does it still lean?

It’s also not known why the motorcycle half was dumped for the Smart drivetrain. I say this as one of America’s biggest Smart fans, but it has to be a downgrade from the Triumph in every way. The only thing I can think of is that maybe Puniwai didn’t finish the lean system before his passing, and thus, the vehicle had to be converted into an open-top car to be salvaged.

I asked the seller these questions, and, as I was editing this, they didn’t answer my questions and took down the listing instead. So, either the vehicle was sold, or something else happened. The seller, who was out of Lake Isabella, California, wanted $5,500 for it. I suppose how good a deal that was would have depended on whether the current version of the Hamrhed is closer to a vehicle than lawn art. But we may never know.

Still, even in this unfinished, sort of unknown state, I love what Puniwai was trying to achieve here. I bet this thing would be a ton of fun to spin a wrench on or take for a spin. Sure, he could have purchased a Polaris Slingshot, a Can-Am Spyder, a Vanderhall, a Morgan, or any number of trikes. He could have made his own life easier by not trying to make it lean. But, Puniwai was determined to do his own thing in his own way, and I deeply respect that. The world needs more Brent Puniwais.

Topshot graphic image: Facebook Marketplace