Meet The Owner – Alex Sebbinger and his Rover 825 Sterling

Cars go through hundreds – if not thousands – of interim changes during their production lifetimes. The purest of their kind, they’re normally the rarest of all; altered, improved, facelifted, or scrapped early on after flaws were exposed. Few survive, and even fewer are cherished.

For arch Rover 800 enthusiast, Alex Sebbinger, his 1986 825 Sterling is something of a holy grail.

Long before his chair of the 800 Owners’ Club (2015-2019), Alex was a fan of the model, known as ‘XX’ within Rover. Like many, a family member ran one in period, and sowed the seed.
This blossomed into a large collection over the years, encompassing every variant and engine bar the diesel and carburetted 2.0-litre four-pot.

But we digress. Good things come to those who wait, and Alex certainly had to wait with this car.

He said: “I first became aware of it in 2011, [I] saw it listed on eBay and it was bought by another enthusiast, I didn’t have the capacity to buy another car.

“That person put it up for sale, I wasn’t in a position to buy it again, but it passed another well-known 800 enthusiast circles and it was then put up for sale in 2014, a friend of mine bought it, he had it for a little while and then he mentioned to me [later in his ownership] that he needed to sell it so I thought: ‘All these times, this is my opportunity to buy the thing.’

“I didn’t really need another 800, but it was available again, so I thought, ‘Let’s go for it’.”
Unlike Alastair Fitton, who discovered how significant his Rover 75 was after he’d brought it under his wing, Alex knew exactly what he was dealing with.

He said: “It was known as being a really early car and it was only when I’d been to Gaydon and seen the one up there, that’s an 825 Sterling, Gaydon’s is chassis number one, this is chassis six hundred and something, potentially, there could be others in a barn, who knows, but potentially, from what I know, this could be the earliest production Rover Sterling still in existence.”

The devil is in the details, and this is where it gets fascinating, as Alex explained:
“825s had some different features, what I call the Crystal Maze seat buttons; when the 827 [87-88] came out, they changed it to something more conventional, the gear lever is a T-shaped whereas on the 827 it went to a more ‘Cobra head’ design.

“They didn’t make the 825 for long, they were considered underpowered. It’s a Honda engine, so they were lacking torque anyway. This one isn’t bad, you just have to use the accelerator.

“This car has got some very early features – this is 800 nerd territory like the fact that on the later cars, you have a screw to hold the door card on with a cover, on these you have to pull the carpet back.

“Everywhere you go has the feel of a pre-production car. In the boot, the radio aerial amplifier, the main loom going to it ends about an inch too short, so they fabricated a little moulded wire to extend the loom, it’s as if they weren’t quite there. And the aerial amplifier is a totally different model to ones used in the later cars.”

Few early 800s survive; even fans would admit that Rover’s build quality perhaps wasn’t where it needed to be from launch. Luckily, Alex’s 800 had been looked after by its previous owners – and it was a running, driving car when he bought it.

“I haven’t done any bodywork to this car, it’s had to have a bit of sill welding for the MoTs. It’s an early 800s, I hate to say it, but the build quality was questionable. All the work’s been mechanical – cambelt, water pump, ATF change, tyres.

“Whoever had it previously had the wheels refurbished – or had new old stock, whatever they did, they look beautiful – and they’re the correct period roulette 825 wheels because they changed them when they went to 827.

“These early ones were so questionably made, I remember in 1996-7, just getting into cars – remember these [800s] would have been 11 then – and I saw an identical car to this; an 825 Sterling, D-reg, in silver, so another launch car.

“I remember sticking my finger through the rear wheel arch. The previous owners undersealed this car, so it’s clearly been looked after, but it’s still an early 800 with 98,000 miles, it shouldn’t exist.”

Alex’s car was one of what’s thought to be 1000 800s sent out to Austin-Rover dealers across the country to promote the model in 1986. As founder of the Modern Classic Executive Cars Group on Facebook, he displayed the 825 during the Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration Show in March for that club’s display; a keen collector of luxury barges, he had considered moving the Rover on.

“800 was announced July 1986, this car was registered August 1986 this was in the first batch that were then sent out to dealers,” Alex confirmed. “I’m unaware of any of the other cars sent out apart from the one in Gaydon and that never went to a dealer, it just went straight into [the British Motor Museum’s] collection.”

There’s a good chance that Alex’s car is the oldest XX-era Rover 800 left outside of a museum.
“What I need to do is get a Heritage Certificate because I know Gaydon has XX is their records, I went online and checked. When I had the R17 they didn’t, but XX, I think they do.”

“I check regularly online [and] I’ve never seen another one this early, there’s been D-registration cars but they’ve been 1987, not 1986, and other early cars have come and gone; these things rusted for a pastime, if I took it out on a winter’s day you’d hear it rot. It lives in dehumidified storage.”

At the start of 2023, it was boom or bust time for the 825; having sold his ex-Royal household 827 last year, and with a new-to-the-collection car on the way, the Rover’s place on the fleet depended on whether or not it drove to the NEC without issue.

Alex recalled: “I don’t like to focus too much on the same thing, I’ve had them [800s] for a long time and there are other things to look at. So I was giving thought to moving this thing on, but as the show got closer, I thought ‘maybe not’ and having driven it up here, and with the reception it’s got, yeah, it’s gonna stay.”

With its place on the Sebbinger fleet assured, Alex has plans afoot: “For the 40^th anniversary of this car, and the 800’s is in three years’ time – 2026 - by then I would like to get this minted up, it’s never going to be 100 per cent perfect, there’s wear on the seats and the headlining, but it’s got a story to tell.