To put things into perspective, that is less than the time it took for you even to read half of the title of this article.

One of my fondest memory of my childhood was a red tricycle my dad gifted me for my birthday. It used to be my transportation, dinner table, shopping cart and a lot of other things. In fact, I even learned my first drift lessons on that tricycle. But then one day, life happened, and I never saw it again.

Fast forward a couple of decades and out comes this French lunatic known as François Gissy who just made the fastest accelerating thing on three wheels ever. Making use of a 6000 psi water tank, he did the 0-60 in half a second and went all the way to 162 mph.

If you studied physics in your school (and you actually remember any of it), you would know something called Newton's THIRD law of motion. For those who don't know anything of that sorts, don't bother here. Common sense should get you through the article.

François Gissy, an engineer by profession, loves tinkering with jet propulsion systems and attaching them to stripped down motorcycles and bikes to run down the straights at blistering speeds.

Gissy and his Trike creation


One of his latest creations is this simple looking trike that is all fixed up together at Gissy's garage back door. All that is visible is a straightforward chassis made up of three wheels, rectangular tubes and one huge-a** compressed tank carrying the propellants, in this case, natural and pure air and water.

The air and water mixture is then compressed into the tank at a whopping 6000 psi (your average motorcycle tire pressure is a paltry 30 -35 psi) and when that monster ready to burst away is let out of a tiny valve, all hell breaks loose. Gissy is propelled to a whopping 162 mph in under 4.5 seconds, doing the 0-60 mark within half a second. !

If you think those numbers are impressive, take this: Gissy covered the first 60 feet in just 0.852 milliseconds. That is less than one one-thousandth of a second; Usain Bolt dashed his record run at 40 foot per second.

There is more. In those first 60 feet, Gissy was pulling a massive 5.138 gs'. That is close to what a formula one driver experiences. You can see Gissy's head pulled right back as soon as he begins his run. If not for the harness attached to the trike and his jacket, Gissy wouldn't have made even 10 feet sitting on the trike. Instead, his bottom would've been on the ground.

Now for those 'non-Newton loving' folks, if you were wondering how it works, this video should explain the principle.

If you think that this is the fastest Gissy has gone, get ready to rub your eyes, again.

He has also previously created a Rocket Bicycle with which he created a world record. That crazy French guy ran at 207 mph on a completely stripped bike with a bloody rocket under the saddle in just under 4.8 seconds.

I wonder how his eyeballs are still in his sockets.