Berkeley sportscars set for 2021 revival | GRR
Way back in 1956, Mr. Goodwood himself – the inimitable Sir Stirling Moss – helped launch a brand new British sports car marque, Berkeley, by taking the wheel of the Bedfordshire-based brand’s SA322, a tiny two-cylinder, two-seater drop head, and driving it around the celebrated West Sussex Motor Circuit for its first public outing. The company sadly went bust in 1960, but now it’s about to make its return.
After Moss launched the SA322 in 1956, Berkeley went on to build a series of other small, featherweight fiberglass two-stroke sportscars. Its initial SA322 model was quickly followed by a number of different iterations on the same theme, with about 1,200 examples of its SE328 model sold the world over, and the micro-sized T60 three-wheeler derivatives selling in even stronger numbers.
At the October 1960 London Motor Show at Earls Court, Berkeley took the bold step of attempting to move up-market with a new, full-sized four-cylinder Bandit model, aimed at the jugular of well-established contemporary rivals such as the Austin-Healey Sprite. This proved to be far too ambitious however, with only two examples made before the company went bankrupt.
Following a short-lived attempt to revive the marque in the 1990s with Mini-powered front-wheel-drive SE328 and T60 replicas, the Berkeley name seemed destined to remain forgotten in the history books for ever more, that is until now.
Almost 60-years to the day of the ill-fated Bandit’s Earls Court debut in 1960, there’s a new, modern Bandit model, set to return in April 2021. It will be offered in both lightweight open Roadster and GT closed coupe form, with a choice of existing mid-mounted Ford 2.3-litre EcoBoost petrol power or electric alternatives, plus two- or all-wheel-drive options being made available, based on a bespoke in-house Berkeley platform design.
Reservations for the two new Bandit models are now being taken ahead of Berkeley’s planned April 2021 debut.