‘Now that it’s out and running, be sure you run it,’ the 1951 Ariel’s owner said with a wink before sending me on my way, but I was feeling out of my element riding the Ariel Square Four. The shifter’s on the right and shifts backward, feedback from the brakes is vague at best, and the engine was puffing smoke since waking from hibernation.
‘I’ll just tool it around for a bit,’ I thought. But the character of this peculiar four-cylinder revealed itself on the open country roads—and what a lovely alloy lump it is.
It may seem like an oddity today, but a 2×2 four-cylinder engine was definitely a novel concept when Edward Turner first sketched the idea in 1928.…