The Triumph Acclaim is a 4-door saloon from Triumph, built from 1981 to 1984, in the age of turbocharging and the first electronic engine management. Under the bonnet: 1335 cc EN4 I4.
The story
The Triumph Acclaim is a small family car manufactured by British Leyland (BL) from 1981 to 1984, as a locally built version of the Honda Ballade. It is a four-door saloon car with a front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout. The Acclaim was the final car marketed under the Triumph marque, and the first product of the alliance between BL (later the Rover Group) and Honda which would last until the mid-1990s.
The Acclaim was the first Japanese-designed car manufactured within the European Economic Community (now the European Union), to bypass Japan's voluntary limit of 11 per cent market of the total number of European sales. Most Acclaims were sold in the United Kingdom. It was a major turnaround point for BL itself, achieving both reliability and high build quality from the outset. Assembled at the Pressed Steel Fisher Plant at Cowley, Oxford, the Acclaim paved the way for the Honda-based, Rover-badged range of cars which BL (and successor organisations Austin Rover and Rover Group) would develop throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
What is underneath
Power comes from 1335 cc EN4 I4. It weighs 785 kg. It shifts through a 5-speed Manual transmission / manual / 3-speed Automatic transmission / automatic. The wheelbase is 91 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Triumph Dolomite; its successor was the Rover 200 (SD3); assembly was at Cowley, Oxford (Cowley plant), United Kingdom. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Mitsubishi Pajero, the DeLorean Motor Company DeLorean DMC-12, the Opel Corsa — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Triumph catalogue sit the Triumph SD2 and the Triumph Renown.
What it costs now
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Triumph Acclaim has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.