What are the verdicts? “A flashy, tinny, underpowered, over-rated machine,” groans C. S. Coop of Sale, Cheshire. But from Birmingham, J. M. Cooper cries, “I have never enjoyed motorcycling so much since I bought a Leader!” Ariel’s gaffer, Ken Whistance, driving force behind the Leader project, can heave a sigh of relief, though. The Coopers outnumber the Coops by 20 to 1.
The reports are surprisingly consistent. Flat contradictions tend to reflect owners’ quirks of taste or styles of riding rather than differences between individual machines. G. F. Burman, who lives in Manchester, makes a fuss about the feeble horn; his Leader is now equipped with German-made windtones. Twenty-one-year-old Rodney Fry, meanwhile, considers the standard horn “louder than average.”
As I leafed through scores of pages of closely written manuscript a picture of the Leader emerged, a three-dimensional detailed picture, measured against a million-mile yardstick. Read the full article on the link below.
