Triumph Avon Acclaim Turbo

In 1885, ninety-nine years before it would eventually be folded up and buried in someone's backyard, nobody in the UK would have predicted Triumph's final model would be based on a Japanese product.

It'll be like when Buick's final car eventually arrives via China, or Porsche's from Slovakia.

Fact is, the last Triumph was technically a Honda. Then someone put a turbo on it.

Badge engineering has given us some wonderful nonsense, but few cars require as much unpacking as the Triumph Avon Acclaim Turbo.

Start with the Acclaim. British Leyland needed a new small sedan, so in 1979 it struck a deal with Honda. The resulting Triumph was essentially a British-built Honda Ballade—a fancier relative of the Civic—and, when production began in 1981, became the first product of a relationship that would eventually give us decades of Honda-powered Rovers. It would also be the final car ever sold under the Triumph name.

Then, Avon Coachworks got involved.