GENTLE Gentleman
Gan I start straight away by apologising for the slightly surreal quality of some of the photos nearby? Those with the almost psychedelic shades were taken a long time ago on what was known back then as ‘slide’ film, and modern scanning can sometimes produce unexpected results. And there are indeed two different bikes here..
Like many of us, back when the earth was young and old bikes were merely old bikes, I was intrigued by Ariel’s almost mythical Square Four – not least because the idea of having four cylinders was fairly radical around 1970, when I was a schoolboy on a learner Panther 200. Four cylinders! I knew of Honda’s improbably technical 4-pot 750, but only by reading about it. I’d never seen one. And in any case, the Honda’s engine was almost comprehensible, being a similar cylinder layout to my dad’s Wolseley. But four pots? In a square?
A local breaker had an engine – broken, inevitably. My nascent riding pals and I pop-popped over to see it, and stared in awe as the breaker himself – one Cliff Baker, if anyone remembers this genuinely good guy from Hatch Beauchamp – showed us how it worked. I pretended to understand. The 197cc Villiers engine in my Panther was too complicated for me, really…
And then one of my schoolmates acquired one. Old bikes really were so cheap in those days
