Lately, John Deere Road has been a good place to find Curbside Classics. Just 24 hours after I saw the ’67 Impala SS, I saw another CC—and at the very same intersection! This one might well be even scarcer than the Chevy, though.
You might recall that the Sterling was the last effort made by MG-Rover to market the Rover marque in the U.S. Basically an Acura Legend fitted out with a clubby, British wood-and-leather interior, it also provided its owner with an assortment of Britain’s finest electrical problems. Sold in the States between 1987-1991 (full CC here), the Sterling’s many maladies had forcibly retired most of them by the mid-’90s.
With that in mind, you can imagine my surprise when I came upon this still-running Sterling 827 SL that actually looks quite tidy. As surprising as it may seem, there’s also a second Sterling in the area, this one in white, that I occasionally see on the streets of East Moline. Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction.
The Sterling reminded me of a Warsaw Pact clone either of the first Ford Taurus or the Audi 5000.
I recommend a visit to the optician sir
“a Warsaw Pact clone either of the first Ford Taurus or the Audi 5000”
Well, that would’ve been another car…
umm… it actually existed… kinda
had a little of both in it:
There is a family on my grandmother’s street in Ypsilanti that has one of these sitting on the street in front of their house, a gold colored one. I don’t know if it’s still driven though…
BTW, don’t think I didn’t notice yet another beautiful Brougham emblem on your car 🙂
Is that a Brougham emblem right there on your dashboard, Tom?
I see what you did there.
Yep. Here’s a better picture.
A Volvo Brougham! LOL, I love it! Maybe I should convert my daily driver into an Acura Supreme Brougham!
Now that’s what I’m talking about!!!
(let’s not forget, my screen name was supremebrougham 🙂 )
Of course. Didn’t you know that Broughamism goes back to the Vikings in Sweden? Many of their longships had landau tops, and many Viking warriors had opera windows in their horned helmets. Sadly, this interesting part of Scandinavian history was stifled by the Big Three during the Great Brougham Epoch, due to potential negative Brougham connotations.
In spite of its sporty pretensions, I consider cars like Honda Accords (when high optioned), Acura TSXs and Acura TLs to be the Cutlass Supreme Broughams of today 🙂 The CSB (and other Cutlasses too) had that just-right quality that made it such a hot seller — not too big, not too small, not too flashy and not too boring, not too expensive and not too cheap. Middle of the road, in other words, but in a good way.
Woulda looked better if it had been used to cover the ‘SRS Airbag’ script.
Believe it or not, they’re fun to drive cars. It’s the solid Honda engineering that makes them so.
I have only good memories about my dads ’88 825 SL. It did of course have electrical gremlins, but it was otherwise a good, solid car that was a little more luxurious than the Acura Legend. I thought it was pretty cool myself…
I suppose that one still runs isn’t a surprise, since all the US models had Acura engines. That someone put up with over twenty years of failed power windows, failed power locks, failed power seats, failed blower motors, interior water leaks, and parts coming off in their hands is surprising. I worked at Crutchfield in 1992. The guys in charge of disassembling cars to create car stereo installation kits and take measurements for speaker locations couldn’t believe what they found when they took screw drivers to the Sterlings. One told me that everything was so haphazard that they thought someone had already taken the car apart and hacked everything up. Subsequent Sterlings were just as bad, often in their own unique ways.
I can remember being so disappointed when these were unveiled- compared to the 4 door Ferrari Daytona style 3500 they replaced they looked so bland, and no longer ran the V8! Then it turned out the reliability was almost as suspect as the old SD1 series 3500….
Indeed. And, it sure is a pity the 3500’s were such bad cars, they sure were good looking. Can’t understand why their style was not copied at the time…
Rovers turned to crap once they tied up with Honda then being built by BMW didnt really improve things, I wonder how the Chinese are getting on with the brand seems everyone has had a go at building a worse Rover than Solihull could
Funny. In the US the P6 became legendary for its unreliability, even though the magazines loved the first press cars to show up. Jamie Kitman wrote about his experience with the car, how the thousandth time it let him down left him stranded in an intersection in the rain. A passerby approached him and he rolled down his window. “Is that a 2000 TC?” asked the potential Samaritan. “Yes, it is,” answered the now-hopeful Kitman. “I thought so,” said the observer, “I used to have one just like it.” “They suck!” The US SD1 3500 was no better. It had the quality of the previous Rovers combined with a plastic interior that would have embarrassed Hyundai in 1986. IIRC, they had a big plug where the RHD steering column would be in the symmetrical dashboard.
The Sterling was a travesty, but British Leyland didn’t screw up every Honda clone they produced as thoroughly. The Triumph Acclaim was probably Triumph’s best sedan at the least, if not the best car they ever made. The first Rover 200s with the E series engines were certainly an improvement on anything offered before by the group. I can’t imagine what Honda screwed up by their involvement. It would be like stinking up a manure pond.
Gotta disagree there: the Acclaim was a dreadful car! All the reliability woes of a BL car with all the soul-less styling of an early 80s Honda. Not quite in the Alfa-Romeo Arna realms of dreadful tie-up disasters (for those living in regions spared the horror, the Arna was an Alfa-badged Nissan Cherry N12, with italian electricals, built with dodgy soviet-sourced steel) but for my money a close second. There’s a reason the Acclaim was the last production Triumph…
The Rhondas were a better (if still deeply sad) effort, though with hindsight they’d have been as well closing up shop early and simply selling Honda the factories for all the good it did the brand.
I’ve got used to every thread featuring a British car being littered with comments about their “legendary” unreliability and how “awful” they were and pretty much shrug it off, even though cars all over the world all had their weaknesses, not least American junk of the same era.
It does get tedious though to keep seeing it time and again as though the commenter really thinks he is saying something new, or clever or remotely interesting. He is NOT.
I especially get frustrated to the point of anger when these negative nellies start trying to support their boring views with “facts” that they get so far wrong as to be farcical. There are two or three examples of this in this thread already.
Please, if you don’t actually KNOW anything about the British car industry then don’t waste bandwidth regurgitating fallacies that have already been said a thousand times before.
Rant over. Move along please.
I’ll stick to topics I know well. Like the crumminess of many British cars, for example.
Sorry Simon, it’s hard to tell from the position of your comment if it’s me or CJ you’re taking umbrage to here but (for the record) I do know plenty about the British car industry – I live in the UK and grew up during the decline and fall of BL.
Curiously your rant’s in response to a comment which also cited some contemporary Italian/Japanese junk for reference… I don’t think anyone’s singling out British cars for special scorn, but (speaking as someone with plenty of experience of them) it’s perfectly fair to comment on their weaknesses.
While there’s no doubt that the UK car industry cranked out a few lemons while British Leyland was circling the drain, they were hardly alone in this – they call that time period the “malaise era” for a reason.
As mentioned elsewhere, American build quality in the mid – late ’70s was pretty marginal, and Japanese cars of the era were still underpowered, rustprone, little death traps.
The whole industry was struggling with rapidly changing regulations, and emissions technology that wasn’t quite ready for prime time.
Things improved quite a bit when carburetors and distributors went away, and when manufacturing and rust proofing techniques improved.
I am no longer surprised at anything you find Tom.
Was this anywhere near Bridgeway Auto Recyclers? I had a stroll through that place today and was pretty stunned at their back lot inventory.
It was on John Deere Road between Target and Mills Chevrolet.
Never been to Bridgeway, I didn’t think they let customers walk the lot! I usually go to U-Pull-A-Part in Milan. Last time I was there they had a baby blue ’74-’77 Mercury Comet and a ’79 Caprice wagon.
You have to go to Bridgeway and hit the far back lot. You don’t even have to check in at the Office and you will not be disappointed.
I’ll send an email after PHC.
Rhondas of the smaller variety came out with PSA diesel engines other than that they were a Civic like their petrol bretheren these cars are reasonably common here though I ignore them all seem to be sold with headgasket problems yes even the Honda ones
I’ve seen an even rarer one around Santa Monica, an 827 SLi. That was the hatchback version.
The last 4 times I’ve been in Europe, I rented a Mercedes A class, Fiat Marea, Renault Megane Diesel and a “Rhonda” Rover 75. All were marques that generally had horrible reputations in the US, and all very enjoyable on their home turf.
I can’t find anything much online, but Alan Partridge captured everything that wasn’t quite good enough about the Rover 800. Also amusing when he transferred his allegiance to the Lexus – this clip sums up the attitude http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YllyBr_4Kxk
We Quad CC’ers need to have a meeting sometime … Likely we have stories to tell … Tom, what say you?
Someone brought a Sterling to the local British Car Club show.
Hardcore.
I believe that the white car is a Rover SD1 3500 with US-spec headlights.
This car preceded the Rover Sterling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_SD1
Here is a picture of the interior of the Rover SD1 3500 MK2.
Pretty impressive for ~35 year old design!
Here is another picture of a US-spec Rover SD1 3500
While the Rover SD1 was a stunning looking car, they were very bad in terms of mechanical reliability and body integrity.
In NOV 2007, Top Gear UK did a show remembering British Leyland. One of the cars that they tested was a Rover SD1.
The Rover SD1 in this road test lived up to its infamous reputation for very bad mechanical reliability.
http://tviv.org/Top_Gear/Season_10_Episode_7
There is a Honda Legend of this same era just around the corner from me, but I haven’t seen a Rover version in a very long time.
Roberto Esponja mentioned the style of the 3500 – there was a liftback version of the Rover/Sterling 800 series that resembled the 3500 and that I thought looked very nice at the time, however I don’t think that semi-luxury segment liftbacks were big sellers.