Britains forgotten four. The 1948 Wooler prototype, a four-cylinder shaft drive, begins to take shape as the frame is finally ready to accept the latest John Wooler wonder.
John Wooler designed his first motorcycle in 1909 – a two-stroke horizontal single-cylinder machine with a double-ended piston. The first production model was a 230 cc two-stroke with front and rear plunger spring suspension and a patent "anti-vibratory" frame. The motorcycle was manufactured by Wilkinson from1912-1914 with a 344cc engine and marketed as the Wilkinson-Wooler. Production was halted with the outbreak of WWI.
Wooler began it's own production in 1919 with a new and advanced machine which was entered in the 1921 Junior TT where it was nicknamed the "Flying Banana" by the legendary racer Graham Walker.
Very little was ever heard from John Wooler again. Until the 1948 London Show. One of the sensations of that event was a prototype 500cc Wooler shaft-drive tourer with an extraordinary four-cylinder engine. Horizontally-opposed pistons were connected to its crankshaft via a single main connecting rod and a complex rocking-beam mechanism.
Although John Wooler was reluctant to admit it, his innovative engine was completely impractical. To salvage the project, his son Ronald designed a more orthodox horizontally-opposed four-cylinder engine. The redesigned four has a compact all-alloy power unit with one carb for each pair of cylinders and overhead valves operated by pushrods from camshafts in the lower engine. Drive to the rear wheel from the single-plate clutch and four-speed transmission was by a shaft and bevel gears. Maintaining Wooler’s ‘Flying Banana’ tradition, the fuel tank unit extends forward ahead of the neck and forms the headlamp nacelle. A toolbox is built into the top of the transmission and an oil pressure gauge is located just ahead of it.
Predating Honda’s Gold Wing flat-four shaft drive tourer by 20 years, the Wooler set out to offer the highest levels of comfort, silence and ease of use. But Wooler lacked the finance needed to develop and make a competitive product. As few as five machines are thought to have been assembled before John Wooler died and his company folded.
