Breckland Technology Biera V8

I used to drive and review many (many) cars back in the day, including ‘Kappa platform’ cars.

The first time I drove a Pontiac Solstice, I was underwhelmed. Saturn Sky? Slight improvement.

Here was General Motors’ best chance, I thought, to compete with the Mazda MX-5. Its super- and later turbocharged Chevrolet Cobalt SS drove like a gem, with its responsive force induction 4-cylinder engines, balanced chassis, and enthusiast baiting features such as no-lift shifting. 

All the engine needed was a rear-drive home — enter the Kappa sports car platform, long a darling of Robert A. “Bob” Lutz and like-minded employees determined to build the best sports car for the price. GM of that era was different, and somewhat keen on proving everyone wrong with its product.

Did it? Ehhhhh…

By 2009, GM had driven itself into bankruptcy.

GM press releases of that era were full of “Best-in-class!” “World beating!” “We benchmarked against the segment leader…a segment above!” “Highest horsepower per dollar” and so on. Then a Toyota, Hyundai, Ford (really, anyone) would release a new model that rendered all of The General’s work somewhat obsolete.

Really, the Kappa cars, most of the time, drove just fine. Any small problems, I wagered as a reviewer, could be solved by tires, and slightly uprated wear items such as brake pads and suspension bushings to dial in the car to suit one’s preferences. 

A driver’s car, sure, with three fatal flaws.

First, the standard GM interiors looked, smelled, and were textured like a midrange wheelie bin. Driving them, I felt trashy, but at the time, editors would always delete that line and massage my disappointment into that of a “lower-quality materials” variety.

Second, this is a true story, I couldn’t fit a shoe box into the trunk of a Solstice when I tried. The shoe box was of a normal shape and not unreasonably sized, yet would not happily rest within the car’s stupid clamshell trunk.

Third, and what ultimately doomed it: its chassis was so good for its time that anyone who drove a Solstice or Sky or Opel GT or Daewoo G2X…you get it…well, they instantly realized the car could handle two fifty, three, what, four hundred horsepower?

Anyone hoping to improve on the car had to address those issues, especially considering they’d be working from donor vehicles, thus driving up the cost.

In a bygone age, the AC Ace roadster sparked the flame of a racer turned builder named Carroll Shelby, who’d promote and perfect the design into his Cobra. Why reinvent the wheel? For many, big engine + small car = perfection.

A made-in-the-UK Breckland Technology Biera V8 is kind of like the resulting Shelby Cobra, but in reverse — it’s an underpowered American car, improved by the British.

Up front in the Biera is a nearly 400 horsepower 6-liter LS2 V8 engine from the GM catalog. A Tremec 6-speed manual transmission was next, cradled within a lengthened chassis that accommodated uprated suspension, brakes, bushings, and more.

The Biera’s bodywork is substantially reworked, and the interior was treated to hand-stitched leather and reworked dash with a Clarion head unit featuring a center screen that included a ‘30 gb hard drive’, according to Car Magazine.

Biera was based on a platform first introduced in 2005. As of 2008, the Biera’s UK base price was in the neighbourhood of £55,000.

I have no desire to look up what that cost means to me, ’cause from the outset, to a North American that math ain’t mathin’. A V8 Solstice? Like a Mallett? Or the one that old guy in town made in his garage from an LS he found in the junkyard? Give you 15 grand for it…

Truth be told, the open top Biera isn’t my type of car: too impractical, and too hazardous my freckled complexion. (Bet it wouldn’t carry a shoebox, either.)

It wasn’t the first V8 Kappa car, and surely won’t be the last. Given its heritage and professionally engineered mods, however, it could be one of the best. 

Story and sources below…