How Rover's American dream turned sour

This is the finest luxury car and the best executed solution yet to the demands of the US luxury car market,” declared Norman Braman – and he should have known, as the magnate leading a successful dealership group that sold Cadillacs, Maseratis, Porsches, BMWs and even Rolls-Royces.

The car in question? British Leyland’s prototypical XX of 1985 – later to emerge as the Rover 800 Series.

As recently as 1982, Rover had left the US after two years of dreadful SD1 fastback sales – a repeat of the P6 saloon’s performance, fewer than 1500 having sold annually until Rover had given up in 1971.

But the XX indeed seemed ideally formulated, combining the famed appeal of British style with the best aspects of Japanese cars, which were gobbling up ever larger portions of the US market, as a mechanical twin of Honda’s HX – later to be launched as the first-ever Acura model, the Legend.

Those best aspects were production quality, reliability and refinement. “If we miss there,” Rover exports boss Peter Johnson told Autocar, “we are doomed to failure.” Rover’s sales target was 20,000, rising sharply to 40,000, through 100 dealers, targeting the east and west coasts.

To give them the best chance, it elected to ditch its tainted brand name, testing 20 alternatives in customer clinics, of which Sterling was deemed best.

When XX prototypes were sent to Chicago to woo prospective dealers, 850 were expected but 1100 showed up, among them representatives of Cadillac, BMW, Audi, Lincoln, Saab, Jaguar, Volvo and Mercedes – and they “spontaneously burst into applause” when the sheets came off.

The public finally saw the Sterling 825 in late 1986, identical to Britain’s Rover 825 but for extra equipment and some modifications to satisfy federal emissions and safety rules.