It is true that Ian Byrd used the name Ibis becasue it was very fond of the Lotus. However the car was never a Berkeley. It was at best inspired by a Berkekey. Keeping it short.... It all started when.....
Auckland vintage restorer Wallace McNair at one stage owned a Berkeley and with the arrival and success of the Mini he decided to build a Berkeley-styled car in New Zealand that would use the Mini front suspension, a beam axle with Mini hubs. The A series motor would be dropped in favour of using a more modern 550cc Suzuki two-stroke. This was never finished.
Ian Byrd heard about the project and bought the unfinished prototype off Wallace in 1985 he immediately gave the car the Ibis name as well. He then set about widening the car to take the entire Mini front and rear subframes. Unfortunately this car was accidentally destroyed when it fell off a truck on the Auckland motorway after some children had released the rope tethering it.
It could have all ended there but with the help Tim Monk-Mason and another prototype was made from a new plug using bits they could salvage from the first car. This time the project was virtually all Mini with the original Berkeley live axle replaced with Mini trailing arms and coil over shocks. Although it looked like a Berkeley it was a different car with the moulds being taken off a totally new buck. If the two cars were parked side by side the Ibis would have been the slightly longer, wider and the more rounded of the two. Although it resembled the Berkeley, it was clearly an evolution and not a replica. Only about 10 were ever produced.
Below an original Berkeley.
Tim Monk Mason sitting in the Ibis buck
The car was later completely remade. Going by the name of RD Wasp and had more than a passing resemblance to the Cobra in everything but scale. Ian Byrd had nothing to do with this Composites International design. Six of these were built and it is believed that only one remains in New Zealand.
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