IT'S MOTORHEAD SUNDAY

Today's MS offering is a two-wheeled beauty.....a 1955 Ariel Square Four.  Never heard of it?   Read on McDuff!
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· Produced between 1931-1959.
· 997cc
· 40bhp @ 5,800rpm
· 4-speed gearbox
· 425 pounds dry weight (193.18 kg)
· Fuel Capacity 5 imperial gallons
· Top speed for this model....100mph (161kph)

FROM WIKI SEARCH:   The Square Four is a motorcycle produced by Ariel between 1931 and 1959, designed by Edward Turner, who devised the Square Four engine in 1928. At this time he was looking for work, showing drawings of his engine design to motorcycle manufacturers.[5]The early engine with "two transverse crankshafts"[2] was essentially a pair of 'across frame' OHC parallel twins joined by their geared central flywheels, with a four-cylinderblock (or Monobloc) and single head.[6] The idea for the engine was rejected by BSA, but adopted by Ariel. Thus it became the Ariel Square Four.
In 1966 Phil Vincent wrote in Motor Cycle: "Alas, in 1959 the Square Four went out of production, a victim of the modern trend towards small, high-revving modern power units. The demand had tailed off a bit, and with reduced output, the price would have had to be hoisted excessively high. At the time it was approaching £350—out of reach of all but a few of the potential buyers."[2]
A further development was the Healey 1000/4 based on an updated Square Four, produced between 1971 and 1977.
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Now, wrap your brain around two "transverse crankshafts" and try to imagine what the innerds of that block would look like.  I had trouble sleeping last night as I tried to draw an imaginary blueprint in my mind of how those flywheels would be synched and eventually connected to a single chain drive.  A nightmare of "Rube Goldberg" connections that basically made a simple thing more difficult and basically added more parts that could fail.
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 For those motorheads out there who are also into history, read the rest of the Wiki article here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Square_Four
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BEST IN LARGE.