I guess we are all nuts about something. This is one of my “something’s”.
Being a confirmed Ebay addict, I have had an alert running for many years to notify me as soon as an Ariel came up for sale. A few did, but this one I couldn’t let get away.
The Ariel Square 4 was produced in England from the 30’s until 1958. It was the only bike ever made that had four cylinders in a square configuration. The early bikes were 500 cc’s but were soon made with 1000cc’s engines. Their boast was that the engine had so much torque that you could be in top (fourth) gear, lugging along at 9 mph, go to full throttle, and accelerate effortlessly up to 90mph!
This particular bike sat in a museum for 35 years in Ohio. The owner has a collection of Wankel (rotary, as in Mazda) engine powered motorcycles. I didn’t even know such existed. He put the Ariel up for sale because he had lost his present museum site and was moving to a smaller site and to make room, had to sell off the “non-wankel” bikes. Thank you Lord for non-wankels.
The bike’s in great shape, but I am planning to send it to London, Ottawa, Canada for a full restoration. These pictures are the “befores”.