THE SQUARIEL EFFECT
Four’s showroom debut. We swing a leg over an original 4G
Mk.2 and discover its demise came far too early
It’s become a cliché to describe MV Agusta as the Ferrari of two wheels, with each marque dominant in its own form of Grand Prix racing, and presided over by an autocratic despot. Likewise its Benelli rival as the Maserati of motorcycles, but in Britain there’s a couple of comparable analogies, with Triumph so very much motorcycling’s equivalent of its close neighbour Jaguar, while the fast, luxurious Ariel Square Four – of which this year is the 90th anniversary of its showroom debut in 1931 – is most definitely a two-wheeled Aston Martin. There’s another connection between these two legendary models in that the same bloke was responsible for creating them: Edward Turner.
THE MOTOR WAS SO COMPACT IT COULD BE MOUNTED IN THE SAME FRAME AS THE 250CC COLT SINGLE
Turner would later become the most powerful figure in the British motorcycle industry, but in 1927 during the peak of motorcycling’s post-WW1 boom years, he was an impoverished 26-year old former merchant seaman who’d become a Velocette dealer in south east London. Without any formal engineering training, Turner designed a 348cc single-cylinder OHC engine to power a motorcycle he dubbed the Turner Special and advertised it for sale through his small Chepstow Motors shop. The £75 asking price was pretty steep back then, and it’s unlikely he found any buyers – certainly, no such bike has survived the passage of time.
It caught the eye of Vic
