If you were in Blackpool, England in 1965 and had already been up the Tower, ridden the donkeys and consumed half your body-weight in Wall’s ice cream, you may have popped along to the Winter Gardens to see the new machines on display at the Cycle & Motorcycle Show.
If you were a fan of Ariel motorcycles though, the news wasn’t so good. Their four-strokes had already been killed off by parent company, BSA, in 1959 - no more Square Fours. Then, in 1963, the Selly Oak factory was closed and moved production BSA’s facility in Small Heath.
The new ‘bike’ was the Arial Leader, with its enclosed two-stroke engine. Quite a different beast and probably not one to appeal to the existing owners. Sales flopped.
At the Blackpool Show, the Chairman of BSA announced that Ariel would no longer manufacture motorcycles, and another British marque bit the dust.
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Anyone interested in the Ariel Leader or the stripped down Ariel Arrow, there is a fairly comprehensive guide to these bikes in this month’s (May) edition of Classic Bike Guide.
I haven’t read it yet - I wonder if it will explain such a radical design which surely anyone could see would not appeal to British (or any other?) bikers…
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Agree. My first bike was a Sports Arrow just like this one.
In retrospect, it was an excellent machine with good handling and performance that could keep up quite well with bigger bikes on the road. Only the front brake let it down, and that could easily have been addressed. As it was my first bike, I was of course eager to try something more powerful and traded it in at Comerfords for a Velocette Venom as soon as I had passed my test.
I wouldn’t mind another one to play with now, though.
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That black square 4 is a handsome devil
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