Rover 800

The Rover 800 series is an executive car introduced by the Austin Rover Group in 1986 and also marketed as the Sterling in the United States. Co-developed with Honda, it was a close relative to the Honda Legend and the successor to the Rover SD1.

Development

Partnership with Honda

The Rover 800 was designed as a replacement for the Rover SD1. Development of the car began in 1981 as part of a venture with Honda under the XX codename; the corresponding Honda version was known as the Honda Legend, and was codenamed as HX. The development work was carried out at Rover's Canley plant and Honda's Tochigi development centre. The European market Legend was produced by Austin-Rover alongside the 800 in the former Morris plant in Cowley, Oxfordshire. US-market (Acura) Legends were built in Japan.

Range

The basic versions of the 800 used two 2.0L 16-valve developments of British Leyland's stalwart O-Series engine, dubbed M-Series. The 820e, with single point injection, and the 820i with multi-point injection, i.e. 4 injectors. The top versions used a Honda designed V6 unit in 2.5L capacity. Initially, only a saloon body was offered; a liftback version — referred to as a fastback — became available in 1988.

Later, a diesel version of the car was launched in 1990 using a 2498 cc engine from Italian company VM Motori, which was related to the slightly smaller engine used in the 2400 SD Turbo model of the Rover SD1, and Range Rover Turbo D.

The Sterling badge was used in Europe and most global markets to denote the top saloon luxury version and the Vitesse badge used to denote the top fastback sporting version. The Vitesse became available at the same time as the 2675 cc Honda V6. Both of these top of the range models were initially only available in the UK with the V6. In some European markets, in particular Italy, the 2.0 litre petrol was badged as Sterling and later available (in turbo form) as Vitesse to avoid the punishing duties that made engines over 2.0 litres unviable for volume sales.