Trying to compare the motoring demands of the USA to the UK would be impossible, but I’d like to discuss how two vastly different luxury brands on opposite sides of the Atlantic, Cadillac and Rover, independently faced the same question of ‘how to recapture premium sales from the imports’ but didn’t quite copy each other’s homework.
The Rover SD3 story has already been told here at CC in an excellent article by Roger Carr back in 2015. Roger’s article discusses in detail the connection between Honda and Austin-Rover and how the Rover SD3 (or 200 series as it was better known) became the second joint venture project between Austin-Rover and Honda. I shall try not to reproduce this but concentrate on the exam question in hand.
Market forces of the 1970’s swayed the choices of car buyers in the early 80’s to a point that downsizing was inevitable, even in Britain. The British motor industry had produced small cars since the earliest days of motoring. Successful throughout Europe and the Commonwealth, it appeared to be what the industry did best. However, producing anything but large luxury saloons was considered beneath the Rover Company.
Rover P5B
To emphasise my point, after the Second World War, material rationing and a major export drive from the British Government led the Rover Company to design and produce the Land Rover. The Land Rover was an immediate unmitigated success for the Rover Company. Despite such success, Rover intended to discontinue Land Rover production as soon as saloon car production had properly resumed. Over the years, Land Rover was starved of development funds. Their profits were consistently channeled into less profitable saloon car development. I have never understood why a business would snub its most profitable product line to concentrate on something else, but my reasoning is the old British class system. Ultimately it merged with Leyland in the late 60’s, but Rover’s position remained first and foremost a maker of luxury saloons.
Rover spent millions pioneering the use of gas turbine engines in cars and made cars the Queen chose to drive. The USA was big, bold and brash with chrome laden Cadillacs but the British preferred the reserved distinction of a navy blue Rover. By the 1970’s Jaguars were for bank robbers and Rolls-Royces for rock stars.
Cadillac Coupe DeVille
Cadillac and Rover were two vehicle manufacturers that comfortably resided at the height of domestic desirability. By the 1980’s though, the scenery was different and both companies were losing sales. Crucially, it was no longer considered that a luxury vehicle needed to be big. For the USA, Cadillac saw their ageing buyers looking at smaller imports. Austin Rover saw their Rover buyers doing exactly the same. In the UK, outsiders like the Volkswagen Jetta and BMW 3 series had eroded Rover’s market share.
Cadillac struck back with the J body derived Cimarron whilst Rover offered the smaller Rover SD3/200 series. Both the Cimarron and Rover 200 series were compact, 4 door badge-engineered cars, both derived from cars of perceived lower quality. Contemporary reviews suggest that ‘Roverisation’ of the Honda Ballade based 200 did indeed achieve that ‘Rover’ feel, whereas reviews of the Cimarron were less complimentary.
Rover 200
Both cars tried to capture that almost impossible task of luxury brand essence in a small package. In the case of the Rover, quality was assured in the Honda engineering, but that all important ‘britishness’ added up to something that created premium feel, albeit at a mass market level. The Cimarron arguably had a much harder job to convince people when trying to imitate ‘Cadillac’ in an 80’s plastic pint sized pot, expectations would have been much higher. It takes little delving into Cimarron history to find evidence of uncertainty in the strategy and half-hearted execution whereas Rover really did believe in their strategy.
Rover 200 Vanden Plas Interior
Whilst Rover suggested its competitor came in the shape of the Ford Orion, it really aimed higher. Perhaps to target the BMW 3 series as did Cadillac with the Cimarron? It seems GM nor Rover could keep up with that moving target despite both improving dramatically during their lives. The Rover 200 did achieve a noticeable level of class above the Ford Orion or Vauxhall Belmont. Where the Ford and Vauxhall were effectively lower quality products with high specification options, the 200 was perceived as a high-quality product that could be ordered with lower specification options. The Cimarron was far closer in that connection to a high specification Orion/Belmont which, with the benefit of hindsight was the wrong result.
Ford Orion
Vauxhall Belmont
In the UK in 1986, a Rover 216 Vanden Plas EFI would cost you £8330, a Ford Orion 1.6i Ghia was £8390 and a BMW 320i was £10,695. The Cimarron was around $13,000 which in 1986 was around £8500.
Whilst the Cimarron eventually received the V6 it always longed for, the Rover comfortably accepted 4 cylinder engines. Contemporary road tests suggest early Cimarron 4 cylinder engines were simply not up to the job whilst the motoring press could not have been more complementary about the 12 valve Honda 1.3 in the Rover. A V6 Cimarron would have been needed to keep pace with a 216 Vitesse but neither achieved anything like the driving experience of a rear wheel drive BMW, regardless of engine type.
The Cimarron and 200 both suffered from being launched with issues that prevented them affecting BMW sales, but frustratingly ended their lives as something reasonably close to their original design brief 8 or 9 years previously. The Cimarron was clearly never going to be a Cadillac but ultimately it gained the V6 engine and styling enhancements it needed from the start, some might say those later Cimarrons were attractive cars. Maybe if GM had developed it just a little more before thrusting it on the public, it could have been launched as a fundamentally different product…… A Cadillac, maybe?
Cimarron – How it should have been from the start
Likewise, Rover launched its car with issues. Road testers at the time of launch complained of poor handling characteristics. This was later resolved to create a neutral, safe driving experience similar perhaps to the Cimarron. A tale of safe mediocrity was never going to hurt BMW.
The same year the Cimarron got the V6, the 200 got the 1.6 Rover engine which has mixed reviews depending on what perspective you have. On paper it provided a greater turn of speed over the 1.3 which allowed it to compete with the 1.6 Ford Orion and being notably quicker than a BMW 316. On the other hand, it was not that much faster than the 1.3, harsher and caused more maintenance issues.
What is almost unfathomable is that the Rover 200 sold over 400,000 units, surprising Austin-Rover when it surpassed their self-declared volume sellers the Maestro and Montego. According to Wikipedia, the Cimarron sold just over 130,000 over a similar life cycle. What is crucial is that despite the initial public reluctance to accept a Japanese Rover, it did not take long for the positive reliability reviews to sway public opinion in favor of the car.
In 1988, one of the major UK motoring magazines ran a ‘warts and all’ real world reliability survey. The Rover 200 series really stands out as a high quality vehicle. Dealers and fleet managers were highly complementary of the car although, the standard comment was that the 1.3 Honda engine was smoother, better on fuel and no slower than the 1.6 Rover engine. The 1.6 was also notably poor for oil leaks. The truth is that the 200 never did anything brilliantly but did everything well enough and that pleased people greatly.
The SD3/200 story is a rarely told one. Most books on Rover (in all its company guises) glaze over SD3 development. The relationship between Rover and Honda was clearly very amiable and productive. A mutual respect between the two companies existed which naturally suited both the Japanese and British cultures. Whilst cars like the Maestro, Montego and Allegro have achieved classic status in the UK, the 200 is mostly forgotten. History has been similarly unkind to the Cimarron, which when looking at the late model versions feels unjustified. Roger Carr makes reference to the UK Scrappage Scheme that sent many cars of this age to the crusher in 2008. In 2015 approximately 100 of the 400,000+ built were on UK roads, that figure is closer to 50 now.
I believe the Cimarron and 200 series were valuable ‘lessons learned’ exercises for not just GM and Rover but perhaps the entire industry. These vehicles allowed the manufacturers to explore where they could take the brands. GM/Cadillac thankfully realised its own value and left this part of the market for good and for Rover, the 200 halted Rover’s decline and repositioned it for a place at the high end of the volume car segment for the next decade with the Rover R8 (next generation 200 series).
In my mind it begs the question: What if? The Rover 200 was a fair success, it added luxury and improved driver dynamics to a simple Japanese product and achieved its target. GM failed. What if GM had tried the same as Rover? What if GM had taken a quality Japanese product and reworked it to Cadillac standards? Would it have been a success?
The Rover 200 story actually begins with the Triumph Acclaim, a British-built re-badged Honda, intended to replace the existing Triumph models (which were way past sell-by date). The main problem with the Acclaim was that it was very small inside.
The Rover 200 was meant to be the Acclaim Mk2, but somewhere along the way it was decided to pension-off the Triumph brand and badge new models as ‘Rover’ , thus taking the Rover brand slightly down-market.
The Rover 200 was very nice and Honda-like inside, far more spacious than the Acclaim, and quite desirable – I probably still have the brochures somewhere.
Start off with a superior product (Honda – Rover) to begin with and the result will almost inevitably be better than what comes from starting out with something inferior (Cavalier – Cimarron).
Perhaps any Brits or expats could also tell us whether Rover had a growing stigma of being a gussied-up version of a lesser car. Cadillac, in its standard line, was already starting to be regarded as a “Big Chevy” by the early 1970s.
I wouldn’t say Rover was a gussied anything, it was just that BL had (like GM) overreached in terms of what a big corporation could achieve. BL needed volume and couldn’t afford to create a flagship loss leader so Rover was slowly downgraded to the main stream. My comparison of Rover to Cadillac is more than a bit tenuous! British and American ideas of luxury or status were vastly different so it would be inevitable any comparison would be open to criticism. But in the 50’s Rover was a true luxury brand and by the 80’s (Or earlier) it really wasn’t. My only hope with the article was to stir a bit of creative thinking!
What would be different is that the Honda was barely known or sold in the UK
Didn’t Hyacinth and Richard Bucket (“…it’s ‘BooKAY‘!”) have one of these?
You were reading my mind. I love that show.
Yes – and that’s the first thing I thought of when I saw this article. And a perfectly-cast car for them – as Hyacinth was a personification of badge engineering.
“personification of badge engineering” – that’s hilarious, because it was so true.
Heck, I can’t even look at a Civic sedan of this period without thinking of Richard and Hyancinth.
I don’t know, but had always just assumed it was a Civic. But in hindsight, Hyacinth would have wanted a posh brand like Rover. It’s a good thing they weren’t imported here (US) like the larger Sterling; I don’t think it would have fooled anyone, as by that time Honda’s were already ubiquitous.
I can’t say that I ever really thought of the Rover as being an overly prestigious make of automobile. I always thought of Rover as being a thoroughly medium and perhaps upper-medium-priced car, similar in status to Volvo, Saab, and Peugeot back before they become popular with yuppies in the 1980s. Sort like Mercury, Dodge, Pontiac or maybe Oldsmobile in the U.S.
The Cimarron was blip on the automotive landscape. Years later it had a spiritual successor in the Cadillac BLS, which was never sold in the U.S. Much better than the Cimarron, it was also a blip on the map. It was then followed by two more blips, the rear-wheel drive ATS and CT4.
In the U.S., the Rover 200 will live on seemingly forever in reruns of the syndicated BBC Brit-com, “Keeping Up Appearances,” that is widely rebroadcast on PBS. Throughout the run of the show, a Rover 200 was owned by the show’s main characters, Richard and Hyacinth Bucket, and it featured fairly prominently in many episodes. (There were 2 different Rovers featured on the show, the first was light blue metallic and the second was more of a medium blue.)
Put in the contest of a lower-priced car that is trying to complete with more expensive and purpose-built cars, such as the BMW 3-series, the Rover 200 was perfectly cast as the car of Hyacinth Bucket, although she didn’t drive and was always driven by her husband, Richard.
British actress, Patricia Routledge, played to perfection the snobbish, lower middle-class, but social-climbing housewife, Hyacinth Bucket (who insists her last name be pronounced, “Bouquet”), and who had aspirations above her station in life. Sadly, in spite of her many schemes to hob-knob with, and win social acceptance of the upper-classes, Hyacinth was never able to succeed, though she sure gave it a good go.
In contrast, the Rover 200 was at least modestly successful, though that had a lot to do with the good bones of, and the baked-in goodness of the Honda Civic on which the Rover 200 was based.
I don’t recall ever seeing a Cadillac Cimarron being driven by any character on a TV show, although there was one featured for a few seconds in the Stray Cats’ music video for their song, “Look at that Cadillac.” For a few seconds after 1:29 point, there are some scenes, apparently put in for comic effect, of a large-ish female customer wearing a hat having trouble fitting in a Cimarron D’Oro while a salesman stands by. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrb7c6YL4ZI
With the long time demise of Rover what would Hyacinth Bucket be driven in now? My candidate would be a Skoda Scala.
2009 Jaguar X-Type.
Richard would have tried unsuccessfully, for a Toyota Corolla.
In a previous professional incarnation about a decade ago, I used to visit the homes of a great many “Hyacinths”.
By far the most popular car was the Honda Jazz (Fit) in a pale metallic green or blue, as favoured by Mr and Mrs Bucket. The VW up! was also starting to make inroads.
We were all so fed up with the garbage BL was foisting on us, Marina, Maxi, Allegro etc, all god awful fuggly motors. Badge engineered Japanese cars were welcomed with open arms. We prayed that Honda would take over BL, but no such luck.
No a assist stripper did instead and by 2005 Rovers had gone. Insult to name the little square 200 series as Cimarrons . Better Britishisation of the Honda than the 800 series.
Yes! Only a fool would try to pass off a Civic as a luxury brand. Oh wait, never mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acura_CSX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acura_ILX
I can think of other similar attempts to badge-engineer a lower-priced car and to try to turn it into a higher-priced car. The Jaguar X-Type and Infiniti I30 and I35 are generally regarded as a mediocre failures, as was Cadillac’s subsquent the (not-for-the U.S. market) BLS.
On the other hand, the Lexus ES and Lincoln Zephyr and MKZ were generally considered successful.
Interesting article. An old Rover is a very rare sight here in Canada, and their collaboration with Honda made for what sounds like a good car. Too bad they didn’t have they same success with the Sterling. As for Cadillac, I wondered what they were thinking when they came out with the Cimarron. I had an ‘84 Cavalier, and while it wasn’t a bad car, there’s no way I could imagine the same car rebadged as a Cadillac. It just did not have the cachet one would expect of a Cadillac, and the makers (and owners) of the makes it was supposed to compete with were right to snicker about it. The later models with the V6 were certainly an improvement, but the Cimarron was an also-ran from the moment the first one left the factory. The Catera did not fare much better, though it was certainly less of a joke than the Cimarron. Now if Cadillac had been able to collaborate with a Japanese manufacturer (Honda or Toyota come to mind) who knows what they could have come up with? A Cadillac version of a premium JDM product like a Crown, or one of the Lexus models would have worked – Cadillac cachet with Japanese quality and reliability. Not simply a rebadge, but something based on one of those platforms. Or maybe something based on an Acura platform? Something great to drive, along with (I’m repeating myself here) Japanese quality and reliability. We’ll likely never know, but, hey, a fellow can dream.
I think the mistake with the Cimarron began on the outside, it just looked too much like a Chevy. Considering that this was one of the few times EVERY single car division at GM was producing a version of this J-body, Pontiac had a much more compelling value than Cadillac. Then there was the interior, again, a near mirror image of a Cavalier.
When Cadillac tried the smaller is better route in the 70s, the resulting Seville was based on a Chevy but sure didn’t look like a gussied up Nova…well, not much.
As far as the Rover 200 series, didn’t it use non-Honda engines and transmissions? The Cimarron used both out of the humble Chevy.
These cars were state of the art. They were not bad at all (although I must confess that my knowledge of the Cimarron is limited). But those rebaged Honda Rovers were definetely good cars, much more reliable than their british predecessors.
I think their main problem was sheet metal quality. The germans of the 80s, especially Mercedes W123, BMW E30, Audi C3, had raised the bar. Until Lexus came up, the germans had no real competitor.
There is talk these days in the US about ‘one world, two viewers.’ What is being described is the way our political divide grows because whatever happens, both sides think it reinforces their views. The author of this review is using the viewer that I am not. The third generation Civic was a brilliant product that took Hondas from being cars for people who read auto magazines and knew motorcycles to being cars for people who also appreciated advanced styling as well.
They made everything else in the parking lot of my swimming club look dated in 1984, including all the German stuff sold at a premium. They had unique suspension designs that would have done the Rover of the ’60s proud, never mind the Rover that produced the ‘value-engineered’ SD1 in the ’70s. Lower quality vehicle? Hondas have never been perfect in that when they solved their rust resistance issues they picked up environmentally friendly paint that is fairly weak. They built a couple of decades of cars that often only had the one flaw, and now they are just another car company with solid value but European durability.
Rover went on to put their name on the dregs of Austin. 114 anyone? They also were the company that built the critically acclaimed embarrassment that was the 2000TC. It was a fantastic compact sedan that didn’t get you home. Road & Track made the mistake of compiling an owner survey and discovered that the car they told everyone to buy was the worst car anyone could buy.
.There is talk these days in the US about ‘one world, two viewers.’ What is being described is the way our political divide grows because whatever happens, both sides think it reinforces their views. The author of this review is using the viewer that I am not.
The author is saying exactly the same thing you are, if you would take off your polarizing sunglasses and actually read it.
. Lower quality vehicle?…Hondas have never been perfect…
What lower quality vehicle? He specifically praised the Honda for being a higher quality vehicle. From his text: The Rover 200 series really stands out as a high quality vehicle. Dealers and fleet managers were highly complementary of the car.
What are you actually trying to say, to the extent it makes any sense, other than throwing around socio-political generalities that don’t apply here?
It’s very true that sheet metal let these cars down. This era of Rover 200 was very poor for corrosion resistance. Door bottoms were notorious for rotting out early in the cars life and floor pans too were awful. Saying that, I think a huge number of Ford Sierras had doors replaced under warranty for corrosion.
I spent over a week and about 1000 miles behind the wheel of a later Rover/Honda collaboration, a Rover 45 rental in the UK and found it a very enjoyable car. At the time, we owned a 10 year old Corolla and a newer VW, and I think most of my US rentals were still likely to be domestic brands, so maybe my expectations were low. But I remember the fit and finish, shifter/clutch feel and general ride/handling balance as being much more VW-like than Toyota-like. But perhaps that’s true of Honda’s as well; I’ve only driven one or two since I owned a Civic almost 40 years ago.
Great article — there’s definitely similarities between the two, and I’d never thought of the comparison before, so definitely food for thought.
As for the alternate-reality question of what if GM had badge-engineered a Japanese car for its small Cadillac… wow. I’m trying to wrap my head around how that would have played out with the marketplace.
So, if GM had gussied up a Civic, like Rover? I can’t see the end result having been any worse than what we’d had with the Cimarron. But on the other hand, once the market for big luxury cars returned in the mid-80s, I don’t see that GM would have pursued the concept of a subcompact Cadillac any further.
However, I wonder if GM had based a new Cadillac on a somewhat larger imported car, like an Accord. If done right (I know, that’s asking quite a bit), I could see that concept having more staying power, and potentially convincing GM leadership that there’s a future in premium cars that aren’t squishy and broughamy.
All very interesting thoughts to ponder; thanks for this article.
I see that the ad is for a Rover 200 Vitesse. To be a true successor to the Triumph Vitesse, it should have had a 1.6 six. Under the circumstances it would have had to be a V6.
Did the 200 series have the K series engine from the get-go?
No, this car pre-dated the K-Series, but the replacement – which was a little more Rover and less Honda – used the K-Series unfortunately.
Presumably the name was more a reference the Rover SD1 Vitesse – in which case it needed a V8.
What if GM had taken a quality Japanese product and reworked it to Cadillac standards? Would it have been a success?
“Cadillac standards”. What exactly were they in the 1980s? A raft of garbage engines, out of date brougham styling, mushy handling, cheap interiors,…I could go on.
My point is that even if Cadillac had taken an Accord and turned it into the Cimarron, it probably still would have come across half-assed. GM in the mid ’80s screwed everything up that they touched.
Obviously it would have had a smoother engine, but other than that, I’m not sure just how it would have been an effective 3-Series competitor.
Anyway, it wasn’t going to ever happen.
Honda didn’t get where they were (and are) by being stupid, and they would have wanted no part of it.
And that’s probably why they limited their involvement with Leyland to just some modified product-sharing, rather than buying into the operation.
When Rover was sold to BMW, Honda really wanted to ‘buy in’ but BMW we’re offering a much more attractive deal to British Aerospace that owned them at the time. Another article could be compiled on what if Honda had bought Rover instead of BMW?
Honda were rightly annoyed given the success the 2 companies had enjoyed. Most of Great Britain didn’t like BMW owning Rover and the way BMW managed Rover cemented that view.
Sadly, I agree. GM would have likely shot themselves in the foot on a Cadillac/Japanese manufacturer collaboration. Even with Japanese quality and engineering, they would have found a way to screw it up.
There was a Chevrolet/Toyota collaboration. While it may not have been a success from a corporate standpoint, the cars themselves were just fine. Fun fact, the NUMMI factory later went on to build Teslas.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/automotive-history-1985-chevrolet-cornova-%E2%80%93-lessons-not-learned/
That’s because the “collaboration” in the Prize and Nova was limited to GM building the car and slapping a bowtie on it. The car was a Corolla, plain and simple, and fortunately GM didn’t try to improve it.
I actually rode in one years ago, The only GM parts I could readily see were the Delco radio and battery.
Rhondas here didnt seem to have the same cachet as in England they came in a confusing ser of engine specs my brother in law worked at City Rover for quite a while and drove Rover 200 diesels as company cars fitted naturally with PSA diesel engines some petrol models had BL engines apparently the odd one had a Honda engine most were troublesome the diesels being the best for reliability but very noisy as Rover did not bother adding enough sound deadening handing was at Honda grade sort of average Japanese hardly something that could compete with Cadillacs which we did not get, I still see the odd Rover on the roads though the ranks are rapidly thinning no parts are available except from the internet or wrecking yards so people just scrap them and thats where I saw the last one on a truck heading for a pickapart outfit along with a nice pile o fexJDM imports.
Ironically, I recall a R&T road test of the first-year wheezy, rattly, stumbling 1.8 Cimmarron. (Not to mention personal experience as my best friend’s parents bought one)
The writer summed it up as being like “a Honda Accord that doesn’t run very well”.
Perhaps GM would’ve been better off with a rebadged Civic!
Happy Motoring, Mark
There is a lot of truth to this article and both with a little more development could have been so much more,