Yes, math wizards, I stand by that headline. This little, 600something-pound, two-cylinder sports car making all of 18 horsepower is easily – easily!– more fun than so many other sports cars, including ones that can field twice the power of this one. Yes, it’s more fun than a 36 hp sports car! Hell, let’s say it’s even more fun than a sports car with three times the power! Yes, I’m saying it now: this 1958 Berkeley SE328 is more fun than a hypothetical sports car with an unheard of 54 horsepower! That’d be like, what, a Karmann-Ghia or something?
Okay, Mayne a Ghia or an old 356 would be as much fun. Fine. Whatever. But the point is that the Berkeley SE328 is a charming little machine, and there’s one that our Autopian co-founder Beau owns that he may choose to put up for auction. And I have feelings about that.
We’ve actually talked about this car a good bit before: it was the first car I ever got to bid on and win at auction, thanks to Beau’s generosity with letting me have the joy and thrill of bidding on a car. It was pretty damn exciting; I see why people get so into this:
And, later, I got to drive it around a lot to do a full video about it, which is where I really fell in love with the little citrusy thing; also, yes, we borrowed a good bit of footage from this video for the newer one up top, but you know how that goes. Why let good footage go to waste?
These are really appealing little cars, one of the very few microcars designed not for austerity and perfidy and basic transportation needs, but for fun. Affordable, achievable fun for people for whom an MG or Austin-Healey Sprite was just too much car for too much money.
As I wrote of the Berkeley’s origins in that earlier article:
“Berkeley was primarily a maker of fiberglass caravans – what we in America call campers or camping trailers – but that was a seasonal business, so the company was looking for something to sell when camper sales were slow. That’s why when Berkeley was approached by designer Lawrence Bond, the guy who had made the Bond Minicar, about designing a low-cost, fun sports car that could be “something good enough to win World 750cc races,” the team was willing to give it a go.”
What I really love about the Berkeley is that, for a while at least, it was the cheapest sports car one could buy, and I find that sort of superlative impressive. And I’m even more impressed with how the car doesn’t feel like some budget compromise, at least when you get past its diminutive size.
In styling and driving feel and just overall tone and character, the Berkely feels like what it was intended to be: fun. It’s a blast to drive, and do you think someone in a more expensive roadster is really having all that much more fun than you are having in your Berkeley? My gut says no, no they’re not.
The Berkeley feels like a great democratizer of sports cars, in a way. It brings open-topped British roadster joy to the people, like Promethus brought fire to humankind, just with more two-stroke smoke.
So now Beau may be putting the Berkeley up for auction. And I get why, it may be time for someone else to get some happiness from this cheery little thing, I’m just fond of the car and liked knowing it was somewhere where I could have access to it, if I really wanted to. But that’s me being selfish.
I remember when we had this thing sitting in a booth at the LA Auto Show, and I remember just how many people stopped to look at it, to take pictures of it, to let their kids crawl inside it, and how happy it made them. Sure, most of the exhaust of this car is unburnt fuel and oil from that dirty two-stroke inline-twin, but at least a decent percentage of the emissions of this car must be raw, uncut joy. People smile when they see the car, when they drive it, when they hear it, everything. It’s mechanically-produced levity, wrapped in fiberglass, and I hope it’ll end up with someone who can really appreciate that.
I’ve already got a small European two-seater convertible from a company that went out of business decades ago, with an eighteen horsepower two-cylinder, two-stroke engine, a sequential transmission, and resin-and-fiber-based body panels, so please let Beau know that he doesn’t have to put this one up for sale on my account.
This so much. Lightweight cars are just so much more interesting than people think. Porsche has a billion gizmos to make their 1.5 ton car feel nimble and light. These cars just don’t have 1.5 tons to hide. Sometimes a little slowpoke car like this can do one little thing super well, such as basically floor it around highway circular on-ramps where every other car (you know, with weight) has to slow down to not fly off. Makes them feel like the opposite of a pony car. Instead of power with no handling it’s extreme handling with extremely low power.
My sub 1800lb Insight is like this. So much fun. I used to explain it to people who don’t get it like this…. Imagine your car can go X around a corner. If you got it up to speed and tossed the engine out of the car, it would go X+something around the corner. These cars are that. Except they use little tiny weigh-nothing engines rather than ditch them.
If this goes up for auction, I have the feeling that someone under the name Nosaj Yksnihcrot might be bidding on it.
A Fiat 850 Spyder has more than twice the hp, but less than three times the hp, so want to compare it to that? I’d take the Fiat.
It needs to go to a home someplace where the auto exhaust regulations aren’t going to sideline it. Where I live (Memphis, TN) there’s no longer any auto inspection / brake tags needed. Just pay your yearly road tax and drive what you want.
FWIW I think we SHOULD have annual inspections back again, including sniffing the tailpipe for unreasonable levels of crap, checking for functioning brakes, lights, and checking insurance coverage BUT with certain exceptions for collector’s cars (like the Berkeley)
Most other developed countries have figured this out. You can be safe and clean while also allowing fun and historic vehicles. I would have said Europe, but some countries have been getting a little too draconian as of late.
I really wish we could find the happy medium between overly-restrictive European regulations and the increasingly non-existent American ones.
In Sweden, the car inspections agency used to provide an engineer who would come out and inspect home-built cars prior to completion and give helpful advice. People who created custom cars would actually welcome this person, since they would avoid massive future headaches, but also because they were literal experts, who saw everyone’s builds in advance, and could give all kinds of helpful pointers.
Not sure how that works nowadays, as our inspection agencies were privatized by libertarian nincompoops.
If it was mine I’d have to find some room for it in the garage, or maybe a closet, and keep it. My Miata needs a little friend to play with.
Small and lightweight = good!
Nothing like a small 2-seater convertible sports car. The smaller the better. When my older daughter got her Miata, I asked her after a few months how she liked driving it.. she replied “Dad, you don’t drive a Miata, you wear it!”. Made daddy proud!
Small and lightweight and just enough hp = best!
I’ve had 7 different Miatas including a 2004 NB mazdaspeed with some flying-miata go-fast bits, a 94 NA with a Jackson Racing supercharger (and flying-miata suspension bits) and a 2010 with a Fab-9 turbo kit, which was by-far the most hp’d Miata I’ve had (~270hp) . Every Miata I’ve driven has been absolute fun, but where the higher hp mods were always a laugh, especially in the twisties and on the track, my keeper is a sweet stock 91 with maybe 100hp on a good day, and it is always a smile. Always.
I say: Long live the lightweight, modestly powered 2-seat roadster!
Your post is the right answer, and as a Miata owners, my son and I get it. But man, we are unfortunately down to only 1 Miata and reading about owning 7 makes me think that I should get another one.
The urge for more power is natural, but it’s good to recognize that the right amount of power is what one needs. My 48hp kei is a lot of fun, but my 70hp Chevrolet Turbo Sprint are the most fun cars I ever owned.
Thanks… the 91 Miata to me is the best example of the old saying…
“More fun to drive a slow car fast than it is to drive a fast car slow!”
I can ring out the gears, hearing that classic 4-banger exhaust (Mazda really dialed it in, especially on the original NAs and 3rd gear), just kissing the rev limiter, then I look down, and I’m only doing 50 🙂
I sort of think this car should just go to Torch somehow…if he promises to build a garage or something to keep it in.
Hmm. In a motorcycle the engine would be called a parallel twin. Add a couple wheels and now it is inline? It sounds right, I think, but it is interesting.
Let someone else experience the joy!
I’d say sell it, but only because I want to fantasize about owning it.
I went through a stage where I was seriously enchanted by strippers – cars, not people. The more minimal it was, the more interested I became. Chevette Scooter, Velorex, you name it. If it came factory fresh looking like it had been pulled off the assembly line at around the 80% mark, I was curious to know more.
The Berkeley goes a similar route: how little car can we build and still call it a car? Two seats: plenty, twice as many as the minimum. Two cylinders: more of the same, we’re piling on the luxuries here. Curb weight: Yes, it weighs more than a curb. Not a lot more. Depends on the curb, really.
This is the kind of car that is just enough to connect you to the road and leaves everything else up to you. Fling it with abandon, the feathery weight and minimal power mean you probably won’t screw up too badly. You have to be living extraordinarily dangerously to exceed the tires’ capacity to keep you shiny side up.
Something about this car made me do a double-take when I saw Torch driving it without a helmet. It just ticks the ‘basically a motorbike’ box in my head.
It probably weighs less than some bikes.
You should read up on the Brazilian market stripper specials – Juscelino Kubitschek ordered all manufacturers to create bare-bones versions of their cars to promote car ownership. These super spartan compliance specials received exposed cardboard on the interior, no chrome, no glove compartment lids, no headliners, and so on, and typically sold very badly. The policy continued under the Junta.
The Simca Alvorada was named after the presidential palace, hinting at how the car was only the result of a direct order from there. The Renault Dauphine Teimoso only had one single taillight. The ultra-cheap VW Beetle “Pé de Boi” didn’t have a fuel gauge; it used a dipstick instead. The DKW-Vemag Pracinha lost the freewheel function as well as the self-mixing system, making for a generally terrible owner experience.
Leaning towards sell it because there are other way-more special vehicles in the collection, but does this thing really need to go when it can probably fit in the back of one of the other cars?
SELL IT TO ME NOW
no, sell it to me!
It is I to whom the car should be sold!
Hey! Back of the line, pal! Line jumping is not a sport!
Are we awarding the car on the basis of grammar?
If the car put a sentence together, it most certainly deserves an award.
I’ve always said “the slower the car, the bigger the smile.”
I’d be hard pressed to give this little stunner up!
Some cars just have ergonomics, subtle handling tweaks or charm that defies accounting, but is still quite real.
Looks like a keeper!
Keep it it use a model for 3d scans to 3d print multiple for a tiny ev race with Tony hawk. Then sell them for charity to freak Ferrari out.
Wouldn’t it properly be said “bark-lee”?
It deserves to spread the joy around.
I voted sell be cause I’d totally buy it.
The Berkeley should stay because it’s awesome.
Electric conversion, but use an electric skateboard motor. Sure, that’s not what people usually mean by “EV skateboard,” but in this case it could work. I found a 9600W (~13hp) skateboard in about 20 seconds of googling… so I’m sure we can find a smidge more output if somebody spends more time on it than I did.
Get Tony Hawk back on the line.
I’m more of mind to find a fuel injected 800cc V4 from a Honda Interceptor and put 110HP in it and let it absolutely terrify roundabouts.
“More horsepower” is just so incredibly dull and overdone. Let’s see what the least we can get away with is. If it’s fun at 18hp, let’s just dial it back a little at a time until it stops being fun. 17? 14.5? Let’s find the line and then go back up one notch.
Pull a spark plug and see how it is with 9.
Some of the most fun I had as a kid was in a homemade go-kart with a Briggs 3.5 HP engine. Sometimes less is more!!
Replace the engine with a Honda V-twin – not from an Interceptor, but from a lawn mower. You could get a little horsepower bump and, unlike the engine that’s in there, get replacement parts.
Electric is boring if you can’t shift gears…
That’s why we’re going to use two derailleurs as the transmission. You’ll have more gears than you know what to do with. 22 gear ratios ought to be enough to wring sufficient fun out of less than 18hp.
You would die.
Gloriously.
You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome.
Put a Stark VARG motor and batteries in it. 80 hp. Is way more than this would need and 721 foot pounds of torque is , well I’d really like to know.
Actually if only I fit in a lotus Europa, those did pretty well with only 80 hp, and about one tenth the torque.
It’s adorable and I want to own one, but it should be sold. Definitely pass the fun on.
I collect 1:43 scale yellow car models, and would love to have a model of the Berkeley SE328 in these colours. Google tells me none are available.
Surely there is an Autopian out there somewhere who has the connections to get a die-cast or resin model car maker on the case?
Just buy the l life size model!
Well since the Berkeley is already a 1:4 size model, so you might have to search for …uh, 4:43 scale?
Great little cars and I love stuff like this, but I’d move it on as it’s just not a practical thing being so small in modern traffic, but if I had my own island with roads . . .
This one is an easy sell.
I love the little car, but it should live in the country with easy access to two lane twisty roads. It would be happy cavorting with like minded Kei cars.
Someone needs to go park this outside Mazda’s headquarters until they look at this the same way they looked at a Lotus Elan, and then create the Mazda MX-1, a Kei Miata. (ie this with a modern engine etc.)
Why isn’t there a choice “just sell it to Torch at a loss and yet everyone still comes out ahead”? I have a hard time imagining anyone else quite so fitting/happy at the wheel.
This is the best option.
On the condition that he has to drive it home, all the way from the San Fernando Valley to North Carolina.
Google Maps says it will take 50 hours, and that’s avoiding highways and tolls and being able to go the speed limit.
It also says 10 days by bicycle, which is probably a more realistic time for an old 18hp 2-stroke vehicle.
Google Maps also says Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico aren’t called that so I’m not sure how trustworthy they are about anything else anymore.
I just ignore those parts until they change them back next year.
It’s 10 days of non-stop riding, so make it at least 20. I also assume there are some elevation changes in there it doesn’t account for.
This is like when you inherit your great uncle’s fortune and haunted mansion, provided you stay one night within its walls.
I’m all for this. This car was meant to be used, and if anyone will use it, it’s Torch.