Remember earlier this year when I showed you an incredible and tiny little jewel of a roadster, a yellow-and-green Berkeley SE328? Sure you do. That’s not the sort of thing you forget, after all. And then do you remember how my co-founder Beau let me bid on that car, to experience the decadent, trouser-endangering thrills of bidding on a car auction? Well, we won the car, and now that car is part of Beau’s collection, which means that I can get to drive it and try it out, to really live that Berkeley experience. Which is exactly what I did, and, even better, via the magic of video, you get to join me! For all of it! Even at the end, when we learn some hard truths about our own beloved David Tracy.
Before we get into the video, let’s recap a bit about what this car is all about, exactly. As you can see above there, the car is tiny. Like, bathtub-sized tiny. It’s a microcar, after all. But, what’s interesting about this microcar is that unlike most microcars, which were built as little spartan mobility tools for severe and austere times, the Berkeley was built for fun. Cheap, easy fun, the kind of car that was targeted at people who wanted an MG Midget or an Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite, but felt that those were both maybe too much car, in size, power, and, most significantly, cost. [Ed note: We launched our new player and the video is below but it’s not functioning 100% the way we want it to, just to be safe we put the YouTube video at the bottom of this post- MH]
I’m going to quote from past Berkeley articles to give you some background, if you’ll forgive me:
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.
This is a car that made 18 HP from its Excelsior two-stroke engine and weighs only 672 pounds. It’s tiny in every context. And it’s fun. Enough talking, though; time to see this little monster in action!
See what I meant about David? What a jackass.
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Have you got a size XLT friend you could try to stuff in the micro cars you drive?
At 6’4″ every time I look at a fun sized car (even Miata) I have my dreams crushed.
Find a Triumph GT6, put an EFI system in the engine to increase output to around 150 horsepower. This upgrade to the inline-6 engine will yield for you a fun car that does 0-60 mph around 5 seconds, and could get over 50 mpg highway in that configuration with proper tuning. Stock with carburetors, you’ll get around 25-30 mpg, 0-60 mph in 9 seconds, and about 100 horsepower, but it’s still very light and tossable, and with modern tires, goes through the corners better than any bloated modern car.
I have one I converted to electric. A friend of mine who is 6′-3″ fits in it comfortably. Lots of leg room.
Be prepared to work on it every weekend to keep it going.
> Be prepared to work on it every weekend to keep it going.
Wait… I thought half the point of an EV conversion was to make it low-maintenance!
That is the point.
I was assuming he was going to keep it running on the ICE. The ICE and related components on these cars require constant upkeep and maintenance. They were poorly built overall.
Going EV eliminated most issues, but not all. The rotoflex couplings need to be replaced periodically, for instance. I’m going to solve that by swapping in Toyota parts for the suspension.
I honestly had never heard of the GT6, so thanks. I’ll start keeping an eye out.
I always need to sit in a vehicle before I buy which makes hard to find vehicles even harder to find. Sure I could ship in something but if I can’t drive it when it arrives…
At one point I bought an SA RX-7 sight unseen. My head hit the roof and my left leg was squeezed between the door and steering wheel in order to work the clutch. But I drove it anyway, for about 30 minutes at a time, because it was an absolute blast to drive.
I’m 20 years older and a lot less flexible now so that isn’t really an option anymore.
I love this site. A toss off joke gets real and useful answers.
I’ve ridden in one of these at a microcar show and I’ll warn any potential buyers that, even compared to many other microcars that are overall physically smaller, these have very little legroom. Shop accordingly.
Your legs are the front crumple zone.
I’m used to that. What I didn’t like was crumpling my legs just to be seated in it.
My first prototype was made with a corrugated plastic body shell. I’d fly down state highways in it at 50 mph sharing the road with 3-ton CUVs/SUVs/trucks and sometimes fully-loaded 18-wheelers. Crashing into something was definitely not on my to-do list. The best part is that the cops couldn’t do anything about it because legally it was a “bicycle”. 🙂
It did get rear-ended by a truck while stopped at a light, but I designed the rear bulkhead correctly and was uninjured. I was able to repair it with some used election signs.
Looking forward to getting the next body shell ready.
Right now, with the ASI BAC4000 controller feeding 13 horsepower peak to my Leafbike 1500W motor, it does 0-30 mph like a V6 Dodge Charger(I raced one at a stop light, pulled ahead at first, and it overtook me around 30 mph), but because I only have a 46.8V battery pack, the acceleration tapers off quickly at that point, topping out at 50 mph.
Once I have 108V in it and a PowerVelocity 144V controller, should be good for 0-60 mph in 8 seconds with a top speed somewhere near 110 mph. Should this work out well, I’m adding some Grin all-axle hub motors to the front wheels and a controller for each of those as well, for a grand total of 25 horsepower and AWD, which very well might be enough to screw around with Hellcats.
post some pictures, i need to see what this bike looks like
https://i.imgur.com/1KvhZN8.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/j75uGn7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/1aaEtdp.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Jrz8rYc.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/sPN7T9X.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/fBOfwwl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/tzO209r.jpg
150-200 miles range at 30-35 mph on 1.5 kWh with light to moderate pedaling effort. At top speed, range is about 70 miles.
The next iteration is in progress, with an ultimate goal of 100 miles range at 70 mph.
There’s no throttle. I configured it to get around any of my state’s motor vehicle definitions, and it is perfectly functional as a “bicycle” when I turn everything off. There is no throttle for speeds above 20 mph and the throttle is capped at 1 horsepower, and pedaling effort otherwise determines acceleration via torque sensor.
I’ve been pulled over repeatedly in this thing, and there was nothing they could do.
I posted them, but it is awaiting moderator approval. I don’t know how long that will take. Be patient.
My ultimate goal is to build an actual 150-ish lb microcar off of this concept, with roll cage and crumple zones.
Also, here’s videos of me riding an earlier version of this:
https://vimeo.com/284616898
https://vimeo.com/284616919
At first glance I thought that was an F150 Raptor. On a second look, seeing its a Bronco really drives home how small the Berkeley is.
Though, by itself with Torch in it, it doesn’t look THAT small. I think it is just because he is more Hobbit than human.
Hobbit? Nah, Torch is a straight-up gremlin!
Regarding the video setup: things were pretty awful yesterday but it appears you’ve taken the feedback to heart and things are working much more smoothly today.
Thank you for your patience! There are a million things I want improved, but our partner spent a lot of time with us today going through the list and they’re launching a bunch of stuff on Monday that should fix a lot of the remaining issues.
A friend of mine had a basket case of these. I tried ti buy it, but he ended up trading it for a bmw 733 with a manual transmissiom. That had a crackef head, and he sold it for nothin.
But i love these. These and honda S6/800s
Ferrous Duelers Face Off – Clever wordplay. Did you go to Berkeley?
First, watched the video and loved it. More
JasonTorch Drives, please!Second, This makes me wonder what a $15,000 MSRP competitor to the Miata would look like, if you could even manage to make one today at that price for a profit? A Miata is about as small as it is possible to go, interior volume-wise, for a reasonable fraction of the population to actually be able to drive one. Maybe start with something like a 1.6 Kia Rio drivetrain and slap it in an ultra-minimalist roadster body? Perhaps a modern reboot of the Fiero concept with an FWD econobox powerplant slapped in the back of a bare-bones MR sports car. As long as the weight stays below 2400 lbs or so the car would have sufficient power to weight ratio to feel sporty.
Make it as analog as possible, with the bare legal minimum of safety stuff – one of those ‘picture in picture’ rear view mirrors for the back up camera to avoid the screen in the dash nonsense. Just do a built-in phone holder a-la one of those European economy cars – I think it was Dacia? – and a cheapo stereo head unit with bluetooth. Manual rack and pinion steering. 5 speed manual. Run active noise cancellation in the cabin so that you can avoid the weight of sound insulation. Make the seats mesh like Herman Miller Aeron office chairs and just run an extra HVAC vent under there and save the space, weight & cost of heated/cooled seats, foam, upholstery, etc.
It could be a great little bop of a car, affordable enough to actually be a fun second car, or maybe even a kid’s first new car for college, given a decent sized frunk. One can dream…
Make it a tandem two-seater coupe, ala Divergent Blade, except smaller and more aerodynamically slippery. You’d be able to get 250-300 miles highway range with a 15 kWh battery if you pulled the aero off correctly. Using hub motors in each wheel each with its own controller, you could have a 900 lb pocket rocket with at least 200 horsepower.
If safety regulations are too insurmountable, sell it as a 3-wheeler so it can legally be a “motorcycle” or “autocycle”.
You’d be looking at sub-10-second 1/4 mile drag times, and the lateral cornering could be well over 1.5G with the right choice in tires and the right placement of the center of gravity. It would cost a fraction of a penny per mile to operate. It could be kept analogue apart from the control systems and charger, and where electronics are needed, they could be kept “dumb” with all the software open-source.
The inexpensive Chinese hubmotors/controllers, small battery pack, and low material build cost would conspire to keep it a $10,000-15,000 vehicle if you could produce it in enough volume, and had a large enough potential market to justify the volume. And if you could not and had to hand build them, the performance could still justify a 6-figure price tag.
Here’s an interesting real-world existence proof of the kind of car you’re describing – 39.4 inches tall, 47.2 inches wide, a Cd of 0.159, and weighs 374 pounds without a driver. It just went 1,599 miles on a 15.5 kWh battery – at 26 mph. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/1600-miles-on-a-single-charge-student-built-ev-sets-new-world-record/
Add crash structure, stretch it for a second seat, and push the performance up a *lot*, it would gain a bunch of weight, but it has plenty of room to do so!
103 miles per kWh is almost as efficient as my 91 lb custom-built “bicycle”/microcar! Except this thing is significantly heavier, and significantly more slippery than what I put together.
The concept is once again proven!
These massive 200 kWh-battery codpieces weighing 8,000+ lbs are such a massive waste and misuse of this technology.
That muc22 is fantastic!
To ‘enbiggen’ this while minimizing the increased frontal area and cd, I am imagining a 2 seat per row arrangement with the drivers side a few inches ahead of the passenger side to help to keep the cockpit narrow and still allow comfortable enough shoulder room, like the vw xl1
The VW XL1 and Bertone Blitz both had offset seating to help reduce frontal area. It doesn’t allow frontal area reduction like a tandem two seater does, but it is still a significant over the conventional side-to-side arrangement, and maintains the sociability aspect of interacting with a passenger.
“…sell it as a 3-wheeler so it can legally be a ‘motorcycle’ or ‘autocycle’.”
Berkeley did that as well with the T60:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6201/6092100386_d101383867_b.jpg
This video conveys just how much fun it is to drive something so diminutive and nimble.
I’d like to one-day make a modern interpretation of this sort of 2-seater vehicle as an EV, with close to 1 horsepower per lb of vehicle weight, AWD with hub motors, and sufficient streamlining that only like 20 horsepower is needed to hold 120 mph on flat ground. With this sort of platform efficiency, you can get a surprising amount of range with 10-15 kWh, and easily pack hundreds of horsepower into such a battery pack. The cornering would be like nothing in existence. You’d basically be driving a Formula SAE car on crack, in the street.
Alright, Toecutter, strap in! This story is gonna rustle your jimmies!
Back in about 1960, my grandfather bought a Berkeley for his 4 kids to drive. They enjoyed it, had a few mishaps, and I think my Dad may have taken my Mom on a few dates in it!
Eventually, I think the engine gave out, so they sold it to their neighbor.
He was a bit… eccentric.
He had the idea that he could turn it into – are you ready for this? – AN ELECTRIC CAR!!
He pulled the gas motor, left the chain driven transaxle, and bolted up an electric motor. He used lead acid batteries as power. In order to build in a battery tray in the back of the car, he cut the body at the rockers and just lifted off the top half of the fiberglass shell. Unknowingly, he cut the brakes in this step.
He wired it all up, put a rheostat connected to the gas pedal, and for “safety”, put a big main power throw switch on the hood.
The first time he drove it, he had juuuust enough brake pressure to get out of the neighborhood.
When he hit the main road in Lubbock and came to a red light, the brake pedal went to the floor. He stood up in the seat and tried to throw the main switch to kill the power.
That was when he discovered it had welded itself down.
Dad said he came out of a store and saw his neighbor go by in the Berkeley, standing on the seat. He had one hand on the wheel, and he had a hammer in the other, banging away on the switch.
That was good entertainment back then!
His “controller” was basically a rheostat and whatever he used for contactors. By short-circuiting the lead acid batteries, you can exceed the contactors’ continuous current rating, which is why they welded themselves to the “ON” position.
That guy had balls! Mad respect. I hope him and the car were both okay.
Before silicon-controlled rectifiers were available in the 1960s(eg. Cableform controller, among others), contactor controller setups were the standard for DIY EV conversions. You’d arrange the batteries such that contactors would switch the applied voltage to the motor by re-arranging the battery circuit based upon the position of the accelerator. A 48V pack could have 4 speeds, 48V, 24V, 12V, and 6V for instance. The Vanguard Sebring did this, among others. Genuine PWM controllers with microprocessors and FETs entered the market in the 1970s, and they were very expensive at first.
Hell that would be fantastic live entertainment today and a lot better than YouTube cat videos!
Video worked fine, but PLEASE allow us to disable auto-play
This was great, brightened my day to just watch it, I can’t imagine what it does when you actually drive it.
I do keep hoping some autopian, current or future, pops up to say they own one as well, hopefully in a totally different color scheme. It seems quite possible.
B/c of course a race at some point.
Great stuff. Video playing fine on Safari on M2 MacBook Pro.
Don’t tarnish my brand!!
I understand it wasn’t you, it was the car that made you do it. I will say though that tossing the cup was a bit much
Your brand was founded on tarnish. 😉
Never change Torch! Great video, informative, entertaining, and just great. Sidenote, this video only had the one ad, so that seems to be working as designed compared to the Lotus video the other day that had more ads than video.
I still think that lemon-lime color scheme would be better on a Sprite.
*golf clap*
“both terrifying and absolutely glorious”
lmfao. Great content, boys. As a 2 stroke outboard & snowmobile enthusiast, this car seems awesome.
Minor complaint: You guys live near canyons! This is a sports car! Do the thing! You say it’s fun to drive, but I want to see you have fun driving it! Going straight in heavy traffic is no fun. Cheers!
This thing is small enough to weave between cars in traffic!
Or under an 18-wheeler ala Hardcastle & McCormick!
Raptor to Berkeley: “I’ve got chunks of guys like you in my stool”
“You’d be nothing but a stain on the road and a crew cut.”
Just being in the passenger seat of that thing with Jason driving around a parking lot was breathtaking. Even with the top down, the car tries its best to asphyxiate you. Plus Jason drives everything like he’s playing Out Run.
Out Run was the best arcade driving game ever and I’ll die on this hill.
GTI Club: Rally Cote d’Azur will be looking for you on that hill.
I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again, because I have a compulsion to say it:
Hayabusa that shit! Please!
Even a ninja 300 motor swap has 39 hp, more than (checks simple math) doubling the output.
On the other had it IS sweet just the way it is!
Why doesn’t that car look small with Jason in it?
I could probably fill that entire 11 minute video with just me trying to wedge into that thing. Jason just slides right in. Must be nice to fit into pretty much anything.
Have you met Jason? He’s not a large man.
Jason is not a big guy. I don’t even fit properly into an NC Miata, so sadly microcars are pretty much out for me. It’s kind of depressing.
Can I come take it for a spin?
I got to see the Berkeley in person at the March 32nd 1st anniversary celebration and it is indeed an absolute beauty.
Just watched this on YT.
SAVE FERROUS!!
Do you remember when you said you would fly me to wherever the car is and let me drive it too?
I will check on Monday as all I see if Youtube video
Video won’t load for me. Work computers often have that issue, but your Lotus video is still autoplaying just fine, but I can’t get the Berkeley one to even show up.
Disregard. Working now.