5. 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 that didn’t leave a mark and moved to automotive history’s margins. Sterling had an interesting story; it was basically a British company, established in the late ’80s with Honda’s capital and Rover’s design. Back then, Honda owned Rover and wanted to enter the American market with a luxury model. So they conceived the Sterling, a luxurious car based on the Acura Legend.
It was quite a strange combination, but the finished product looked nice and had a well-designed interior and decent power from a V6 engine. After the introduction in 1987 and promising sales numbers in the first few months, the first problems showed up. The Sterlings were pretty 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, and by the early ’90s, Sterling was gone, and nobody was sad about it. Not even Honda.