Just like Buddy
The Ariel Cyclone 650 is a relatively rare and undoubtedly glamorous by association model, so the first thing to get straight is that Steve Carter’s machine is a genuine Cyclone.
It’s number 19 on the Cyclone Register, where the most famous owner, Buddy Holly’s, is number three. Steve got his eight years ago, with neither buyer nor seller realising what it was. The engine has been out and used in another of Steve’s three Ariel 650s, and with his Irish sense of fun he also admitted, to wind up fellow club members, to creating a ‘pseudo-Cyclone’ with approximate red paintwork and stainless mudguards.
But the Cyclone you see here is the real deal, with chromed steel mudguards as found on the Ariel HS scrambler single, and Glamour Red paintwork (rather than the lighter, more tomato-like Cherokee Red), both features which lifted the Cyclone’s looks. The Club’s Cyclone expert, Sandy Stewart from Canada, confirms that those two were key identifiers from new for genuine Cyclones, along with the ‘HS8’ stamped by the engine number. All can be duplicated of course, so after Buddy’s bike made $450,000 at auction late in 2014, it’s a case of ‘Cyclone buyer beware’
A mighty wind
Steve covers, February 2019 for further details).
