Ural revised its lineup ahead of MY2019 with a host of improvements to the drivetrain, and the CT is one of the units buffed to carry the marque into the 21st century. As with all of Ural’s products, the CT mounts an old-fashioned sidecar that, in turn, acts as a platform for a number of stock accessories. This is a more urban-centric of Ural’s products and not the terrain-tackling Gear Up model meant for use off the beaten path, so its best for folks who plan on staying on relatively civilized roads. It’s also the cleanest base model that Ural has to offer, so let’s check out this “entry-level” sidecar and see how it stacks up against some of the others in the three-wheeled field.
Since most of the updates are under the hood as it were, the CT shows its deep roots going all the way back to the 1940s when the Red Army captured a German sidecar that would become the great grand-daddy of this very model. The overall look of the thing has scarcely changed in the intervening decades. I mean, it still looks like late ’30s early ’40s German architecture, doesn’t it? Even if we ignore the sidecar that hangs off the right side, the oddities start up right out of the gate with a leading-link front suspension utilizing plain steel tubing and a pair of coil-over shocks to articulate the front wheel. You could be forgiven if you thought the boxer engine was one of Beemer’s lumps, but it’s the descendant of that long-lost ancestor that was doubtlessly captured somewhere between Stalingrad and Berlin when the Eastern Front collapsed.