Mercury Snowmobile Becomes Rat Trike with a Ninja ZX-10R Engine

The Sno-gasm is a most inventive piece of machinery, albeit it slots in the rat-rod niche. If you are willing to leave the rust and rough edges aside, the Sno-gasm looks like an even nicer contraption. Surely, the functionality is not exactly what we'd put first on the feature list, but we doubt that the guy who engineered it was too concerned with this aspect.

There is only little remaining to remind us about the 1970 Mercury 250ER snowmobile, save for the unmistakable front end and the windscreen. Still, we are not sure if it looks sweet or dreadful. Most likely it’s the amazing sound of the Sno-gasm that makes up for everything.

Wonder how does one get to make use of the 190hp the Ninja engine can produce

The strangest thing about the Sno-gasm, though, is not its weird hybrid construction, but the steering method its creator implemented. We somehow expected that this trike used handlebars or a steering wheel, and were surprised to see that one has to use his or her feet to steer Sno-gasm.

Such a solution is not exactly new, but in this particular case, it introduces a rather high risk. The rider doesn't look like he’s enjoying too much stability aboard the Sno-gasm, at least not when the thing starts building up speed. The seat may be wide and tall, with plenty of real estate to accommodate even the bigger riders, but its lack of ergonomics may make stability a problem during turns.

This might cause the rider to push the wrong pedal and result in a crash. The wide truck rear wheel and the front track look pretty stable and might make the Sno-gasm hard to flip, but one should never forget that the ZX-10R engine is anything but tame.

And speaking about the Ninja power plant, we'd surely like to see the Sno-gasm ridden harder, with a bold (or insane, if you wish) rider at the helm and scorching the ground and putting the engine to work.