This may be old news to some of you. I spoke with the service department a California Sidecar today and he told me they are no longer making or servicing sidecars. They recently had a fire and much of their tooling for sidecars was lost. Last year they sold 2500 trike kits and 1 sidecar (I don’t know if he was exaggerating but these are the figures he told me). I called him originally to find out what year the Friendship 2 had an external trunk door molded in. His answer was 1992 and anything before that would have torsion suspension. He also told me parts would become hard to find because they would no longer stock them. I’m not trying to start a rumor just repeating a conversation.
I was told the same thing last month. I was looking at a California 3 that needed some repairs and I called for parts. They convinced me to look elsewhere.
Funny, they told me they sell ten trikes for every sidecar. There was no mention of a fire, though.
THIS IS A COPY OF A LETTER ABOUT THE FIRE FROM THEIR WEBSITE
As many have already learned there was a suspected arson fire at the California Sidecar factory on Saturday, May 1, 2010. The good news is that the fire was contained to the fiberglass production area and only damaged that area of our factory. The bad news is that as with all fires there is massive cleanup needed in our factory and administrative offices.
The entire facility must now be completely wiped down by specialty companies who are experienced in such cleanup. Even all of our computers had to be sent to a special “clean” facility in another state.
The original estimate from the cleanup companies was that CSC would have to be shut down for 7-8 weeks which was obviously not acceptable at this time of year. Our insurance company has worked with the cleanup vendors and all have agreed to increase their manpower (and even to use some of our own people) and further agreed to work 7 days a week with extended shifts to get us back up and running as quickly as possible.
Our administrative offices will be up and running as soon as the computers are returned which is targeted for May 12, 2010. The Parts Department will reopen the same day as the front offices.
Due to fire damage our fiberglass department will take several months to rebuild. In the interim, however, fiberglass production has been moved to our other facility 25 miles away and will resume production immediately. Our assembly areas are expected to be back in production by May 17. Assuming these estimated time lines are reached we will be shipping orders again before Memorial Day weekend.
That is very good news and is half of the original estimate but it also means we are nearly a full month behind on all production orders. We are doing everything humanly possible to get production back up and running and everything else back on track.
We ask for your patience and understanding during this extremely difficult time.
Thank You,
California Sidecar
Barry,
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Your man did not have the correct information as the trailing link coil over shock suspension started with the 1989 production year. The torsional suspension ended in 1988 (maybe he was born about that time).
Lonnie
Lonnie, I'm sure you are correct. Once he realized I was not buying anything he could have told me whatever he wanted to get me off the phone. I have yet to go see the sidecar I'm considering but at least I now know it is at least 19 years old because it doesn't have a trunk door. I don't care about the door, I just wanted to know how old it was. $2000.00 for a 19+ year old sidecar sounds expensive. Used sidecars seem hard to find.
