ROVER IN THE USA
Sold between 1987 and 1991, the Sterling 825 and 827 models were rebadged Rover 800s, with various changes in spec geared to the North American market – from sumptuous
Connolly leather seats to motorised automatic ‘seatbelt butlers’. Sales were initially good but quality problems plagued the cars – particularly with the paintwork, interior trim and those iffy
Lucas electronics. Despite being a fine drive, the Sterling came bottom for reliability in the annual JD Power satisfaction survey each year, which was in contrast to its twin – the Acura (Honda) Legend – which was often well inside the top ten. Build quality improvements came too late for the Sterling and in August 1991, the marque was dropped for good.
My buddy Chris Mercon and I set about locating the car and, after a few days spent scouring the Internet, we struck gold. It was a 1988 Sterling SL with the 2.5-litre V6, four-speed automatic transmission, heavily tinted windows and one hubcap. Best of all, it was cheap. The advert offered little else in the way of information and I was concerned by the revelation that it ‘did not like going uphill’. We realised there was a further obstacle, in that the car was located 3000 miles away in deepest, darkest Idaho.
This was not, as it turns out, the biggest challenge we would face. Email exchanges with the owner fizzled and attempted phone conversations were difficult. The Sterling had been listed for sale for over a year, but we got the impression the guy didn’t really want to sell to us. One of the first phone exchanges resulted in a particularly nutty rant.
‘I ain’t sellin’ to you Hillary-lovin’ Liberals in the east!’ he bellowed, and put the phone down. Following some very delicate attempts at reopening lines of communication, we eventually succeeded by offering him the full asking price. All we had to do now was get to Idaho, turn up at the house with $1300 and drive the car a few thousand miles to Pennsylvania, where we’d hook up with James and Jim in the Cinquecento at the Import Car Festival.
Wild Wild West
Ahead of our flight to the west, we called our Idaho-based friend Brian Dubois who agreed to help us out when we got there. Scroll forward a day or so and – having been warned by a cab driver not to walk to the property – we were dropped off in the steamy heat of a Boise suburb and there was our target. Chris wasn’t impressed. ‘We came all the way for that?’ Thankfully though, he was undeterred. ‘Come hell or high water, this thing will get us back home!’ At this point, a scowling woman appeared at the door. Chris smirked and whispered. ‘Look! She’s got as many teeth as a jack-o’ lantern!’ She was as hostile as her husband/partner/brother had been on the phone days before. There was no conversation and no interest in what we were doing. She gave us one very simple exchange, one Sterling and a ‘get the hell outta here’ farewell.
Initial impressions of the car were not great. It started and drove but Chris reckoned that it was about its only redeeming quality. ‘It’s like an Eighties strip club in here!’ The paintwork was faded, the suspension was saggy and the interior was indeed tired and covered in a layer of filth. Now joined by Brian, our Idaho-based friend very kindly offered to dive into the inspection and diagnosis back at his place in nearby Buhl, a town comprising an endless main street with lots of farms and single level ranch homes. We tore into the car’s interior, Chris excavating years of cigarette packets, pounds of candy remnants and other muck. I cannot express my profound gratitude for all the work both he and Brian did in those first few days. Friends like these are hard to find.
There were a few mechanical issues to resolve before our journey east. We performed
a mini-service, with Chris fixing a hole in the intake piping and then gluing the air con panel back together (not that the air con worked). The throttle cable snapped just a few minutes out of Boise, but after some clever thinking at the roadside, Chris modified the pedal bracket and replaced it with the cruise control cable. Up until that point, the cruise control had actually worked so it was something of a sad loss considering the miles ahead of us.
Electric dreams
As the miles passed, we discovered the power windows and power door locks worked, along with the radio and trip computer. Most of the gauges were functioning, but this wasn’t especially helpful at night as the cluster lights didn’t work. The turn signals worked as did the headlights, however only in the most tangential sense of providing lights for forward motion. It wasn’t until we hit some heavier traffic that night, when we realised just how dim they were. Attempts at polishing them with toothpaste helped a bit. The seat leather was not in good shape (due to a lifetime of severe air temperatures) but the power adjustments actually worked as intended. The controls mystified us (as any Sterling/rover 800 owner can attest, some of the switches make absolutely no sense). The heat and fan controls worked but required a special touch that only Chris seemed to be able to master.
Those first few hours proved that the Sterling was at the very least a smooth runner and we managed to run between 70 and 80mph comfortably. We were dazed by jet-lag when, after skimming the north of Utah, we crossed the Wyoming state line. At around 2:30am we stopped at a rest area and reclined the front seats back as far as they would go. We would need this rest as we had to power on through the rest of Wyoming and Nebraska the next day, which began in the town of Lyman for a quick breakfast. Chris and I alternated driving over the rolling lands of Eastern Wyoming, where the Sterling conquered the 8400 feet peak near Sherman Pass – a surprising feat considering how the previous owners had suggested it had trouble going over hills. It seems taping up the intake pipe had sorted it.
Throughout the rest of Saturday, we crossed over into Nebraska and the Great Plains.
There sadly isn’t much to say about Nebraska. Chris was extremely unimpressed and developed a mystifying hatred for the state. ‘It ranges from flat, to really flat. It’s so damned boring’. To relieve the monotony, he continued to poke at the Sterling’s dashboard, repairing this and that as we sped through the endless dullness.
Presumably in response to
Chris’ grumbling, Nebraska brought us a rainy front that would follow us all the way to the East Coast. We drove on through the night with the feeble headlights guiding our path. The roads in and around Omaha were a mess of construction, especially on the east side. With the Sterling’s tired front suspension and unmarked
‘We were dazed by jetlag as we went across the Wyoming state line’
roads, each and every pothole became a teeth-clenching crash. We made it through relatively unscathed and stopped for the night in Underwood, NE, awaking to a rainy Sunday morning.
Our svelte British steed decided the journey was all going far too well in Iowa, where it decided to coast to a stop on the highway. We managed to limp the car into a nearby tractor supply company in Desoto. Some hours later, and for no discernible reason, Chris managed to get the car running again. Around 200 miles later in Davenport, whatever magic Chris had managed to work in Desoto ran out. The car started running poorly again and was extremely down on power. We managed to limp to a Walmart parking lot, and Chris tore into the errant Sterling with gusto. After hours of poking, a more thorough probe of the ignition wires revealed the fault. The wire to cylinder number three was shorting out! With some careful fiddling, it was fixed.
Around 2500 miles after leaving Idaho, a rattling noise from the front had become progressively louder so we decided to investigate, despite the darkness and torrential rain. Chris reckoned it had something to do with the brakes so as I stood holding an umbrella, he took the passenger side wheel off to discover the bottom bolt on the caliper had completely disappeared. The local gas station had nothing for us and, with some trepidation, we knocked on the doors of a handful of nearby truckers to ask if any might have any spare bolts but to no avail.
Then, a sudden lightbulb moment sent Chris on a browse around the Sterling and sure enough, he found one of the bolts that held the trunk lid to the hinge was the perfect match for the errant caliper bolt. Our thoughts turned to Walshe, who would
The interior of this Sterling resembles a really shabby Eighties strip club!’
have to source all sorts of missing and broken items like this in the coming months, when the car eventually landed in his hands at Liverpool Docks. Still, we reckoned those parts would be a whole lot easier to find in the UK than out here!
Home straight
We powered on through the night, leaving Iowa behind and efficiently dispatching Illinois and Indiana to the rear-view mirror. As the radio played songs mostly about Jesus and the rodeo (although mercifully not both at once), Chris and I grinned as we neared our goal.
This particular Sterling has many shortcomings, thanks mostly to the previous owner. However, we reckoned it was a car worth saving, as did Walshe, with whom we had been exchanging texts with for much of the trip. Back at PC HQ, they’d been discussing a possible NEC debut for the car at the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show. Could that actually happen?
Further planning took place when Walshe and Magill arrived at the finish post – the Import and Performance Nationals in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. An event for non-us classics, the Sterling proved to be the only one there. Chris and I handed James the Sterling keys under a now pleasingly clear evening sky and in turn, Chris’ wife Julia handed us probably the most welcome beer we’ve ever sunk. The low evening sun struck the Sterling’s faded paintwork as we sat back on camping chairs for a night of stories about desert towns, mountains and rainy roadside repairs. Bottles clinked. The next stage of the mission was all down to James and Jim: to get the Sterling to the New Jersey container port and home to good old England. Find out what happened in the next issue of Practical Classics!n