Sterling 825 SL
James brings the Sterling home… via Manhattan
You may have noticed in the previous issue (PC, December 2019), that I am the new keeper of a US version of the Rover 800, which is – as I write – on a container ship to the UK. It was located and picked up by American friends Tim Wade Jr and Chris Mercon, who not only prized the keys from its grumpy Trump-loving owner from a dusty town in Idaho with their pal Brian Dubois, but they skilfully nursed the car 3000 miles east across the Great Plains and Midwest to Pennsylvania to hand the keys over to me and my pal, Jim Magill, who flew out there with me for the ride.
Jim is a bad influence. His previous bouts of automotive lunacy have usually involved driving Fiats to far-off places – such as trips to Death Valley in a Panda and an epic drive from Poland to Detroit in a Fiat 126. His incredible globe-trotting road-tripping accomplishments have led many a car enthusiast pal astray – including myself.
This was indeed one of those instances.
We arrived at the Carlisle Import & Performance Nationals (a massive annual car show for non-us cars) to greet Chris and Tim, who had both fallen for the Sterling in a big way. Despite troublesome electrics and the odd mechanical mishap, they were confident the car was ready to nail the last leg of its great American road trip, which would see Jim and I driving it 300 miles further east to the container port at New Jersey.
But first, we had a day to enjoy at the show. In the absence of any other Rovers and with a nod from the friendly members of the Central Pennsylvania Triumph Club, we parked the Sterling near a stunning TR250 owned by founding member, John Krause – a committed Brit classic devotee. ‘I’ve been to Browns Lane and was present when the Canley works were being torn down.’ He says clubs in the US are essential when it comes to foreign cars. ‘I don’t know why anyone would own a classic foreign car and not be in a club. Everybody’s willing to help and give advice and who wouldn’t want that?’
Chris, Jim and Tim arrived with mugs of coffee and for a while, we lurked a short distance away from the Sterling to see if there’d be a reaction.
Sure enough, one gentleman paid particular attention to it, peering inside as well as doing several circuits around its shabby flanks. We pounced. Standing tall and eyes peering at the Sterling under the brim of his hat, Bob Brown spoke with a Clint Eastwood-esque rasp. ‘I used to sell these cars new’. Bingo!
Dealing in Sterling
One-time salesman at an Audi and
Porsche dealership in Colorado, Bob acquired the franchise to sell Sterling cars at launch in 1987. Audi sales had been slow since the ‘unintended acceleration’ spectacle (when owners attempted to sue Audi for a fault that, as it turned out, never existed) while Porsche wasn’t a volume car maker. ‘The USA was terrified of Jaguar reliability at the time, so we really liked the idea of a prestige British automobile built with Japanese parts. We sold a lot of cars at first but… they soon started to come back…’
Bob says owners had issues with the electrics, engine coolant and the interiors quickly becoming tatty. ‘With the hot sun affecting the dye, the trim and plastic aged in different colours, with the carpets going green.’ Brown says he felt like it was a repeat of what he’d personally experienced selling brand new Deloreans and Triumph Stags. ‘We had customers trading in their Mercedes SLS for Stags and ending up very disappointed.’ Bob is nevertheless fond of all the cars in question, particularly the Sterling. ‘It was great to drive and an interesting part of automotive history. To see one here at the show is definitely a highlight!’
The rest of the show was an infectious murmur of enthusiasm for anything from Fiat (‘Feeart’) and Nissan (‘Neesan’) to Jaguar (‘Jagwaar’)
with stars and stripes flapping in the breeze and the characteristically warm USA hospitality present in all four corners of the field.
Hometime
That afternoon, Jim and I got going. Our flights home were booked and we were scheduled to drop the Sterling at the docks in New Jersey later next day. Meantime, we had 24 hours to enjoy Cowley’s finest on the highway to our overnight stop in Queens. It was an easy 300-mile waft in ripped Connolly leather seats, prodding the buttons on the iffy trip computer and attempting to reattach numerous bits of old broken trim. We made a list of the parts required and dropped gentle hints by email to friends in the Rover 800 Club back in the UK. Advice was plentiful – parts were sadly not.
Mechanically, the Honda V6 was smooth and with much of this part of the US highway network flat and straight, there were no nasty surprises as we approached the eastern seaboard. However, nightfall marked a change when we began to skim the edges of New York City. In rapidly thickening traffic on the George Washington Bridge, the car developed a misfire and its misty headlights were making it hard to see anything. Worse still, the quality of the road surface had deteriorated which highlighted some serious suspension issues - a loud bang was now coming from the front. Crawling at snail’s pace so close to NYC’S less pleasant neighbourhoods, the atmosphere around us became tense with New Yorkers aggressively cutting across lanes in front of us. Jim and I nervously joked that should the Sterling catastrophically fail, the safest thing to do would be to grab our bags, abandon ship and run for the nearest subway station.
In the end, Chris and Tim were right to have confidence in the Sterling. It got us to our stopover and transported us into Manhattan next morning, when we triumphantly blasted up
Broadway, through the touristy throng of Times Square and cackled as we mischievously honked at the blank faces of the Wall Street suits.
Once back in the UK, the first stop would be at the local MOT station. America has a different approach to vehicle safety standards so we wondered what would Her Majesty’s Ministry of Transport make of it. Stay tuned, Sterling fans…
‘We triumphantly blast up Broadway and cackle as we pass Times Square’