THE BERKELEY: From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
Post-war Britain saw the emergence of many small specialist car makers. One of the most interesting was Berkeley based at Biggleswade, Bedfordshire.
The roots of the sports car marketed by Berkeley were hardly promising, the company being an established caravan maker. However, somewhat against the odds, it entered the motor industry with a sports car of considerable technical merit.
Designed by Laurie Bond, the Berkeley had a transverse engine and used chains to drive the front-wheels. Its used this configuration several years before the Mini.
The earliest Berkeleys had an engine of only 300cc. Despite this, on-road performance compared favourably with many larger-engined sports cars then available. It also offered excellent fuel economy - not unimportant in the midst of the Suez Crisis and the consequent petrol shortages of 1956, the year of the Berkeley's launch.
The body was also of note, being a three-piece fibreglass affair with the car independently sprung all round and swing axles at the rear. Two different engine and gearbox units were used in the early cars, a 322cc British Anzani and a 328cc Excelsior. Both were two-stroke twins.
Taken as a whole, the Berkeley was innovative and technically advanced for 1956. It was well received and many found their way into competition.
McCairns Motors in Santry, Dublin, became the Irish importers and, although there is no evidence that many were ever sold here, several were successful in Irish motorsport events. McCairns advertised the early models with the line: "70 miles per hour, 60 miles per gallon", a performance no other sports car of the time offered.
In 1957 the range was widened with the addition of a two-stroke three-cylinder Excelsior engine of 492cc and an alternative fixed-head coupé body style. The following year, a long-wheelbase version was announced and then in 1959 a four-stroke 692cc Royal Enfield engined version which could be bought in two different stages of tune. In the higher tuned version, the Berkeley was capable of 90mph - an excellent performance for the time.
By 1959, however, Berkeley was feeling the pressure from other specialist manufacturers, most notably Lotus, and the company didn't help its image among likely buyers of small sports cars, by introducing a three-wheeled version.
In 1961 Ford introduced the straightforward 997cc 4-cylinder 105E engine which was was robust and responded well to tuning. Berkeley used it to power a full-size sports car called the Bandit powered by this unit.
Sadly, the Bandit and Ford's 105E engine came too late to save Berkeley. Only a single example was ever built. The writing, which had been on the wall for Berkeley and many other small volume makers since the launch of the Austin-Healey Sprite Mk 1 in 1958, now led to their failure despite an attempted merger with Bond Cars.
Although hardly remembered today, Berkeley in its short life-span brought innovative thinking to the small sports car market, and, more than most, deserved to succeed.