THE TRIUMPH Acclaim is a prime example of how the British motor industry could always conspire to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory.

When it was introduced (in 1981) British Leyland was in dire straits. It had too many old cars and not enough buyers.

Triumph desperately needed a replacement for the ancient Dolomite range (which could trace its heritage back to the early 1960s) but it didn’t have two buttons to rub together.

In conditions of total secrecy, BL opened negotiations with Honda to buy and rebadge its Ballade saloon as a Triumph Acclaim for sale in the European market.

At the time, BL was the larger of the two partners with interests all over the world and a huge roster of models and marques. Honda was just happy to land a contract that saw it paid a royalty on every Acclaim sold. The deal was signed on Boxing Day 1979.

The pressing need to get a new Triumph into showrooms left little time to transform the Ballade into an Acclaim.

BL engineers pounded round the test track at Gaydon – pursued by BL’s ridiculous ‘state-of-the-art mobile data acquisition laboratory’ which looked to everyone else like a Range Rover connected to the test mules by a spiral of cables – but they were limited to making modest suspension changes. The rest of the car was already set in stone.

Fears over the lack of suspension travel on British roads were addressed by modified damping characteristics and new front seats that were supposed to cushion the occupants from the worst impacts when the shock absorbers hit their bump stops.

Other changes were Triumph badges front and back, a new steering wheel and, er, some strange colour choices (Kermit metallic green was particularly popular).

The Acclaim was launched at the 1981 Motorfair, held at London’s Earl’s Court arena, to polite approval.

Everyone knew it was a Honda, and Ray Horrocks, BL’s managing director, was candid about the need for a badge-engineered special.

“It has bought us time – three years,” he told The Northern Echo’s motoring correspondent Clive Birtwistle. “The dealers had to have a car and this way they have a well-tried car of unquestioned style, performance and reliability.”

He might have added that BL – with its woeful record of breakdowns, recalls and industrial strife – had shown itself incapable of adding the latter to its home-grown line-up for some considerable time.

Horrocks went on to put the best possible spin on the deal: “The engine, transmission and drive train is imported from Japan, but that leaves 70 per cent of the car to be sourced in Britain and Europe.

“The Acclaim is worth 2,000 jobs for BL at Cowley (near Oxford) and some 8,000 jobs for the component suppliers. Its target is three per cent of the UK market, but BL also has exclusive rights to sell it in the EEC. Its Japanese equivalent, the Ballade, is not to be imported here.”

BL had high hopes for the Acclaim. Annual output was put at 45,000 with the potential for 85,000 if things went to plan.

The Echo’s correspondent was duly impressed. “The new Acclaim has all those essential ingredients that make the difference between a car just appearing and one destined to be a classic,” he gushed.

Prices started at £4,668.7 for the entry level HL model with the range topping CD costing £5,575.11. Air conditioning was a £448.50 extra and an automatic model added £299 to the cost.

Ultimately the Acclaim proved to be everything BL hoped – except a runaway success. Somehow the company’s candour about the Acclaim’s Japanese heritage held back sales from Triumph drivers who wanted something “British”.

Between 1981 and 1984 BL sold 133,625 Acclaims before the Triumph badge was retired forever – a sad end to a hugely influential marque.

There was one bright spot however – the Acclaim had the best reliability record of any Triumph, ever.