Blunder Buses: Sterling 825

Despite the language and cultural differences the collaboration began well, even if Honda was wrong-footed by the design proposal Rover had already developed. But if Rover knew where it was heading aesthetically, Honda certainly did when it came to the mechanicals. It insisted on space-hungry double wishbones and a low front bulkhead, a mix that limited wheel travel and compromised the ride. Rover failed to talk the Japanese engineers out of it, even when Honda’s unexpected need to enlarge the engine bay required the car to be widened. But these mistakes were nothing to the decision Rover made over its car’s electrics. Of which more later.

Besides the Honda Legend and Rover 800 saloons built in their home countries, the deal would see Cowley building Legends for Honda, thus circumventing the then ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ limiting sales of Japanese-built cars in the UK, and Honda manufacturing the 800 in Japan (how many of those got built…?). Far more important than these cross-build arrangements, to Honda at least, was its plan to market the Legend in the US under a new premium brand called Acura. To flesh out its model offering, Honda would later introduce a Legend coupé, a tactic Rover planned too.

Despite the SD1 shambles, Austin Rover had quite a strong pitch for the 135 dealers it planned to recruit. The Sterling was a more distinctively handsome car than the Acura Legend, even if it was hardly the sensation that the SD1 was back in 1976. Still more impressive was the interior. It was furnished with wood and leather, as per British automotive tradition, but in an entirely contemporary way. The soft-feel dashboard was attractively sculpted, as were the door cards, while neat metallic grey mouldings and some unusual textures lifted this interior high, even if it was less than robustly constructed. Here was a warmly cocooning cabin that was a pleasure to occupy. And that was just as well, given the many unscheduled waits that innocent new owners would soon be experiencing.

To sell it, Austin Rover recruited highly successful multi-franchise dealer network Norman Braman, its brands including Cadillac, Rolls-Royce, BMW and Toyota. The boss of VW’s US operation was headhunted to lead Austin Rover Cars of North America (ARCONA) and a staggering opening stock of 30,000 cars was promised. Which would have created 30,000 copies of four-wheeled trouble had Cowley actually managed to make them. Luckily, it didn’t, the stock shortages doing much to strangle the initial impetus generated for a car whose promise of British luxury and Japanese reliability had undeniable allure.

Still, 14,171 were sold in the first year – not a bad result, if short of the 20-23,000 forecast. Yet trouble was already brewing, these Sterlings affected by a bewildering array of failures. Fuel and temperature gauges died, electric seats froze, the power mirrors and electric sunroof stalled in sympathy, as did the power windows. All this from a car whose lavish advertising included the not entirely grammatical line, ‘With the possible exception of Concorde – no machine more nicely put together.’ If Concorde had been built like a Sterling, it would barely have left the hangar.

That wasn’t all. The cabin’s real wood veneer was split by a hot state sun whose rays turned the leather seats green, endless pieces of trim came adrift, remote bonnet and boot releases jammed and by year two, Sterlings sold in the rust-belt states were doing just that. Here was dramatic confirmation – again – that Britain was utterly incapable of building a car that worked. Just to help the disaster along, it turned out that many of Braman’s dealers were utterly unused to dealing with cars that went wrong. Repeatedly.

As Sterling owners rapidly discovered their cars’ sometimes staggering deficiencies – Automobile magazine’s long-term test Sterling 825 would return to the dealer nine times, a count that would have been higher had the staff not lost will. Publicity like this was obviously bad. Still worse were the results of the famed JD Power customer satisfaction survey, 1988’s data revealing the Acura Legend at the top of the pile, and the Sterling at the bottom. It really was quite some achievement to turn the technical integrity of a reliable, sophisticated car into a product with all the durability of a cheap plastic toy.

Still, Austin Rover didn’t give up. Not at first, anyway. Step one was to buy out Florida-based ARCONA, originally 51 per cent owned by Norman Braman. Next, the renamed Sterling Motor Company drafted in a team of Cowley engineers to nut out fixes for all the problems. And there was a new management team, one member of which was aforementioned PR man Chick.

Customer cars were improved (a bit), Cowley got better at making Sterlings (a bit) and the car itself performed better (a bit) with Honda’s torquier 2.7 and the introduction of a Fastback five-door. Still, Sterling discounts of $6000 were reckoned to be among the biggest offered at the time. And perhaps recklessly, given the scale of failures, Sterling offered to house owners in hotels if their cars stranded them. The New York Times later wondered whether Sterling had been giving away more rooms than Caesar’s Palace.

Chick and new Sterling boss Graham Morris visited Dave Power of the eponymous research company, keen to persuade him that the latest cars were better built, that the company was here to stay and its mid-term plan to launch a dramatically styled coupé would turn things around. Jaded dealers were shown the same images in an effort to reignite enthusiasm.

But it was too late. Sales fell to 8901 in 1988 – Acura Legend sales soared to over 77,000 units – and 5907 in 1989, when the Sterling’s newly mandated motorised seatbelts renewed the electronic havoc, recalls Chick. He reckons that among the many strategic errors – too ambitious a plan, cars late to market, a head office thousands of miles from the key coastal markets, patchy commitment from multi-franchise dealers – the most serious was having UK supplier Lucas re-engineer Honda’s electrics for the Rover. That single decision eliminated most of the advantage of collaborating with a Japanese manufacturer that knew what reliability was.

Despite the desperate best efforts of Sterling’s fresh team, the brand folded in 1991, four years and 35,739 cars after launch Losses were reckoned to be of the order of £400-500 million. Or more than enough money to develop AR6, the highly promising Metro replacement that Rover could no longer afford.