You're right, if you could clone a BigSur installation on external or internal APFS disk, that method would work to boot BigSur on an "El Capitan supported Mac".
While about installing from an USB BigSur Installer the limit are the IOUSB legacy (currently I only added them to a BigSur installation not to the Installer), as also
@jhowarth noticed
an "Unsupported HighSierra Mac", even correctly loading the Hax.dylib, get that message of firmware upgrade when selecting the Volume where install BigSur, now, if you can't get a cloned BigSur installation, there are two possible fix to install directly on "El Capitan Mac":
1)
@ASentientBot might try to improve his Hax.dylib to ignore that message for non-APFS mac
2) Booting Catalina (or Mojave) through USBOpenCoreAPFSloader3 but spoofing to a supported BigSur Mac (or maybe spoofing to MacBook7,1 that is a supported HighSierra APFS Mac) and then use the "Install macOS Beta.app"
I could provide a config.plist for the second method, but I am really not yet sure how EFI firmware updates are handled from BigSur, while ASentientBot method is more safer.
@hvds try to edit your config.plist spoofing your MBP5,2 as MacBook7,1 and through opencore booting Catalina, insert the Hax.dylib and check if you can install BigSur.