Austin Rover Cars of North America (rolls right off the tongue, eh?) which would later evolve into Sterling Motor Cars, made this line of cars that we rarely if ever see anymore for sale let alone seeing them in person. The seller has this rare luxury sedan, a 1991 Sterling SL, listed here on eBay in Orlando, Florida and the current bid price is $1,310.
I can’t even think of the last time I saw a Sterling and there is no reserve on this auction so in seven days this British/Japanese sedan is going to a new owner. It does have the look of being somewhat designed by a committee but it’s as finely-tailored as a Savile Row suit and has the heart of an Acura inside which would suggest reliability.
They were generally known as being in the Rover 800 family but were known as the Sterling here across the pond. I think the view above has a Mercedes-Benz look to it with the beautiful and subtle body lines, unlike the Hulk Hogan-like ungodly crazed finger-in-the-cake-frosting creases and folds on most cars today. No, sir, this car had class as no other British-Japanese vehicle mashup could have, at least in the five years that they were available here: 1987 through 1991.
One major drawback to late-1980s/early-1990s vehicles for me is draped across the screen above. I can do without those automatic seatbelts. Some versions of the Sterling would have been available with a manual transmission but this one has a four-speed automatic. They’re nice inside, as nice as you’d expect for a British car with a few Acura underpinnings. The Acura Legend could be considered a relative and those sold well but for some reason, the buying public wasn’t ready for the Sterling. The company only sold 2,745 of them in 1991, their last year.
The engine is a Honda C27A, a single-overhead-cam 2.7L V6 with somewhere between 160 and 170 horsepower. This particular car has just over 53,000 miles on it and it drives very well, according to the seller. There are a couple of issues that may or may not be tied to their British heritage, such as the power seats don’t work and the radio is as silent as a Senator in a subcommittee hearing. There has been a lot of maintenance completed and other than a couple of electrical issues, this would be a fun car to own, I think? When was the last time you saw a Sterling?
Boyoboy, does this bring back memories!
I picked up one of the first 825SL’s in the U.S., a press-fleet car (and thus, supposedly, fettled just a bit more carefully than average) and, as it was a sunny afternoon, opened the sunroof, lowered the windows, and headed off down the road.
Not ten minutes later, it started to rain. Y’all can guess what happened….
Haven’t seen one on the road for a dozen years, at least. And, come to think of it, that one wasn’t on the road. It was in a driveway, covered by a decaying tarp.
But they are kind of pretty, especially when compared to just about anything on the market today.
My step monster had one is was broke all the time and was sold within a year.
The last one I saw was when I had to do a warranty repair lol
Always looked like a Honda Prelude with better wardrobe.
Only the British could take a Honda and make it unreliable.
Hondas aren’t reliable, just hype
Rarely Seen Today…
There is a reason for that.
Owned one back in the day. Put very few miles on it…..not by choice.
I seen one of these over 15 years ago in Houston, Tx.! Personally this version looks better than the Acura Legend. The main problem this Brit/Japanese car had was the weird electrical systems on their power systems like the window, locks…the powe for these accessory was stepped down to 8 volt! Its a moneypit to repair though. I had one of these in my shop before we shut it down. It has a bad electrical system breakdown & parts were very hard to find. It told the owner it would cost lots of money to repair it. The owner decided to sell it to me for $500! It took me 8 months of my free time labor to replace and put back to 12V standard. Luckily, all I had to do was replace the relays for the low voltage with the Acura 12V parts. After that I kept it for 10 years then I resold it. During my ownership it cost me $2000 for parts replacements. The plus side was it was quite a reliable car though. Good thing about this car it had the Japanese heritage and Nippon Denso electrics thus no British Warm beer syndrome!
When I saw this car my first thought was it looks like a Ford Taurus and my second thought was those dang ‘attacking’ seat belts. And, yep on both accounts. Acura? Please. The engineers WISH they had built in that kind of reliability. Reminds me of the old joke; why do the British not build computers? Because they haven’t figured out how to make them leak oil.
Good heavens, one look under the hood will make even the most seasoned mechanic run screaming into the night. Blasphemy at it’s best. Bitter rivals in the war, a Japanese motor in a British sedan would make Winston Churchill spin in his grave. I do remember a few of these, since it embodied nothing of what I thought a car should be, we never looked twice. I think they were sold through Austin dealers, which was failing at the time in the US. Given the lack of vintage Honda parts and the non-existent Sterling parts, sounds like a win-win,,
” you can tell a Brit 🇬🇧 …. you just cant tell him much “
Lay off the anti Brit comments guys.
I dunno Luke, we sorta deserve it. But what the hell do I know, I am currently restoring a Plymouth Cricket!
The premise was great – Honda drivetrain, British interior, the failing was British electrics. Friend had one, was a great car for the first two years and 24,000 miles, at which point the gremlins appeared. Meanwhile, another friend with a similar Honda Accord got over 350,000 miles out of his before the tin worm got it. Yes, he faithfully changed the oil, and otherwise maintained by the book, but so did the owner of the Sterling.
My brother in law kept three of these things running for several years. We found a very nice 50,000 mile one owner at a local Chevy dealership used car lot in 1998. It was incredibly nice, but also had non working power seats. Salesmen said the dealer mechanics could not figure out what was wrong with the seats and didn’t want to deal with it. “British electrics” was the excuse. They were asking $5500. He offered $2500 and they told him to come get the car.
The power seats were pretty easy to fix. Just push the idiotic and obscure button on the dash that turned them on/off. Moronic design, with no logic, that few owners even knew about. Why would you ever want your power seats turned off? Radio issue is probably that no one knows the code for it. Once you disconnect the battery, the radio doesn’t work unless you know the code to turn it back on. The code came on a little tag with the original keys, but very few people even realized they needed to keep it. A few smart owner’s wrote it own in the owner’s manual, but most used Sterling owners were out of luck if the battery ever got run down or disconnected.
Made me think , when did I last see an 825 , 827 or a Sterling ? A long long time ago and I’m in the U.K. ! , did the successor to the Sterling , the Rover 75 make it to the other side of the pond ?
Frank, reminds me of a fella I knew, electrical engineer, who had the attitude of ‘if some guy designed it I can fix it.’ Figure out a radio code? Henderson could probably just reprogram it and give it a new code. The dude knew his stuff. I once watched him take apart a milk machine in the break room because it took his quarter and didn’t give him his milk! LoL
Some folks just get it. My brother in law is that way. Fixes everything himself, even late model Mercedes vehicles. Kept a whole fleet of these Sterlings running for years. By day, he is a bank Vice President.
Car iss also listed on Craigslist in Orlando with a price of $12,500… good luck with that..
This one has electrical issues? Hard to imagine!
If I’m not mistaken, these were sold at Cadillac dealers.
Why do the British drink warm beer?
Lucas refrigeration.
When I was in my teens and twenties, I reveled in the idiocies/idiosyncrasies of British cars. Today, not so much.
My experience with products from the Prince of Darkness, Joseph Lucas, was with my 1970 Triumph motorcycle. As an old man, now, I prefer to think of it as character building.
… when you run out of Fiats to repair.
I am a bodyman and when I went to the dentist the hygienist seemed to think I could help her out. She was in minor accident with her 1-2 year old Sterling that had left it undriveable and it had been sitting close to a year at a different body shop because they could not get parts. All I could do is offer her sympathy.
sorry 4 da lousy pic (cept 4 da under hood & interior).
Great co, but not the ‘wedge’: Griffin, Grantura, Tuscan, Vixen, etc
Very coincidentally, Car And Driver published an article just the other day about a long trip they took in 2 of these Sterlings – without a single hiccup.
Very interesting story, and they mention one of the cars having inoperable power seats. I wonder if they didn’t know about the switch that Frank Armstrong mentions above.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a39739359/two-sterlings-road-trip/?source=nl
You had to look in the owner’s manual to identify that seat switch on the dashboard. Dumbest design ever.
Frank, it may be the dumbest design but I now own a 2012 Chrysler T&C Touring that has no button on the dash to open up the back lift gate. Unless I just haven’t found it. I don’t have to stick the key in an ignition but I have to manually push a button TWICE to open the lift gate. Any help?
Run away as fast as you can!!!! As mentioned by many others, terrible electrical and reliability issues with these cars
There was a much better looking fastback version, of which there is video footage – Tony Pond doing a 100mph “course clear” lap of the Isle Of Man during the TT races. It made it all the way round, amazingly…