Unsung heroes: Triumph Acclaim

It's fair to say the dawn of the 1980s was not a great time for British Leyland. The company had managed to survive the turmoil of the seventies but not without gaining a very poor reputation, and their well-documented financial problems meant the product range was not in the best of health. The evergreen Land Rover and Mini were still selling well and the Metro was the great new hope for the future, but new legislation in the USA had killed off their popular sports roadsters and caused the closure of the Canley and Abingdon factories, and the mainstream family car lineup was looking very much past its best.

The Allegro 3, Maxi 2, Ital and Ambassador were all crude facelifts of ageing and unpopular designs that were long past their sell-by date and had bad reputations and very little appeal, so something new and better was urgently needed. Salvation was to come in the form of a joint venture with Honda, the first fruit of which would be the Triumph Acclaim, an underrated car that I think is deserving of greater accolades for being the first in a long line of successful Anglo-Japanese collaborations. I could easily have written 'greater acclaim' there but such puns are cliched and everyone uses them when talking about this car. 

The Acclaim was a Honda by another name. That's a good thing.

The Acclaim was basically nothing more than a Honda Ballade with Triumph badges, but this wasn't really a bad thing as the Ballade was a very competent (if unexciting) car in that typically Japanese fashion. It drove well and the styling was pleasant enough - while it wasn't exactly stunning, it was inoffensive and couldn't be called ugly like so many of BL's own designs. More importantly, after so many years of sub-standard products, the Acclaim was actually very well-built and reliable as the Japanese principles of sound engineering had survived onto the UK production line at Cowley, and it proved that under the right conditions BL's much-maligned factories were capable of building genuinely good cars after all. This was quite remarkable given that Cowley seems to have had the worst reputation of any BL plant and at times quality control was virtually non-existent - most infamously it is claimed that a Marina was once built there with disc brakes on one side and drums on the other!

Acclaims came in standard BL colours. This one is the rather attractive Opaline Green.

The decision to badge the Acclaim as a Triumph was an interesting one, perhaps because the Triumph name had been less tarnished by the events of the previous decade than Austin or Morris, and it would turn out to be the last-ever Triumph car. Launched in 1981, it differed little from the home-market Ballade (which was not sold in the UK) and was available with only one engine but it was a good one: Honda's powerful and free-revving 1335cc unit that could hold its own with 1600-engined cars. Acclaims were offered in four trim levels: L, HL, HLS and CD, the latter being quite well-equipped with optional air-conditioning, an unusual feature for a car of this class at the time that reinforced Triumph's prestige image. Gearboxes also came from Honda in the shape of a 5-speed manual or 3-speed 'Hondamatic' automatic, renamed 'Triomatic' here, and BL's influence was restricted to twin carbs and revised front seats, supposedly using the same frames as those in the Ford Cortina.

Not the most eye-catching design but nowhere near the ugliness of its sister models

Despite concern that it was a 'Trojan horse' for the Japanese to increase their share of the UK market and circumvent import quotas, and some snobbery from those who thought it wasn't a real Triumph, the Acclaim was generally well-received by the press and public. It was initially only intended as a stop-gap until the Maestro was ready for launch, but proved successful enough to briefly remain in production alongside that car, and after just over 130,000 had been built was then succeeded in 1984 by the Rover 200 (codename SD3). This strengthened the Honda partnership and built on what the Acclaim had begun, being based on the next-generation Ballade and following the same principles but with more 'Roverisation' to turn it into a proper British car, and set the path that the newly-renamed Austin-Rover Group would follow until the sale to BMW.

The very last Acclaim - the end of the road for Triumph but a new beginning for Rover

Acclaims seem to have survived in healthy numbers and are a fairly common sight at classic car shows - they tend to appeal to younger enthusiasts and don't suffer from the 'old man' image of other Triumph saloons. Although the Acclaim itself didn't last that long and may seem fairly insignificant, it ushered in a new era, proved British Leyland could build high-quality products and left a legacy that changed Rover's cars for the better. Indeed, the relationship with Honda it began would persist for 25 years, through the immensely popular R8 Rover 200/400-series right up to the very end of MG Rover in the shape of the Civic-based 45 and ZS. It is for this reason I have nominated the Triumph Acclaim as one of the unsung heroes of the British motor industry, and I feel it is a deserving candidate.

Acclaim, JDM style! Without the badges it was virtually identical to the Ballade.