16. Sterling 825
If you don’t know what the Sterling 825 is, nobody can blame you. Once marketed as the next big thing in the luxury segment on the American market, Sterling is now a forgotten brand. It failed to leave the mark, moving to the margins of automotive history. Sterling had an interesting story. It was basically a British company, established in the late ’80s with Honda’s capital and Rover’s design.
That may sound like a strange combination, but the finished product looked attractive. It had a nicely-designed interior and decent power coming from the Honda V6 engine. But after the introduction in 1987 and promising sales numbers in the first few months, problems showed up.
Sterlings were poorly put together, the electronics were troublesome, and some cars even developed rust issues. Honda tried to improve the production process, but there wasn’t much they could do. By the early ’90s, Sterling was gone, and nobody was sad about it – not even Honda.