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At first, it looks like any other example of the exquisite Armstrong Siddeley Star Sapphire – until you notice those quad headlamps. Then you realise that it is fitted with a larger rear screen and more prominent rear wings while the cabin features front head restraints that double as picnic tables for the occupants of the back seat. This is the one and only example of the Star Sapphire Mk. 2.

Sixty-three years ago Armstrong Siddeley of Coventry devised an update of their highly respected Sapphire 346 saloon. The resulting Star Sapphire debuted in 1958 and was intended to tempt the discerning motorist away from the Bentley S1. Power was from a 4-litre six-cylinder engine fitted with twin carburettors, the front doors were forward-hinged, and a lowered bonnet line gave the new A-S a slightly more contemporary look. The specification included front disc brakes (a “first” for AS), PAS and Borg Warner DG transmission fitted with an intermediate gear hold.

The owner also benefitted from heating controls front and rear, an adjustable steering column and front door armrests, a petrol reserve and a back-screen demister, which was (highly unusual in the late 1950s). Brian Sewell memorably described the interior as ‘an apotheosis of veneers, for not only were the door-cappings and dashboards riots of figured walnut, but it framed the windscreen and the windows too, and stood tall between the doors’.

Armstrong Siddeley promoted the Star Sapphire as ‘a ‘Managing Director’s Car’ and (shades of Laurence Harvey style anti-heroes) that was ‘tailor made for the man at the top’. Equally importantly, their latest motor-car was ‘superb for the man who drives because he loves it, or because he must’. In other words, the Star owner would be able to look down on Humbers and Wolseleys with patrician disdain.

The Institute of British Carriage and Automobile Manufacturers awarded the Star Sapphire first prize for 1958 and their Gold Medal. Meanwhile, Autocar of 11^th September 1959 thought the coachwork’s ‘staid appearance gives no hint of the high performance and many of the virtues of a good sports car’. As a ‘docile luxuriously-appointed town carriage, owner- or chauffeur-driven, the Star Sapphire has few equals even beyond its price range’.

A month later Bill Boddy of Motor Sport grumbled ‘The test car was in an odd colour combination which drew crude comments from some of our acquaintances’. However, he also proclaimed ‘Britain still manufactures high-class beautifully-appointed luxury cars which have no equal anywhere in the World. Such a car is the Armstrong Siddeley Star Sapphire’. Boddy also noted the rear seat was somewhat ‘limited in respect of head space and top hats would have to be removed’. In the late 1950s, headwear accommodation was evidently of great importance when considering a new conveyance.

Boddy’s report concluded the AS shone ‘as a fine car of the old school, sober in appearance and particularly easy to drive’. Yet it was ‘less brisk and more thirsty than the Daimler Majestic’. More tellingly, he also thought the Star ‘not as good value for money as the Jaguar Mk. IX’. The original Mk. VII of 1950 caused a seismic change in the market for large saloons, and eight years later its successor in automatic form cost £2,042 10s 10d. By contrast, the Armstrong was priced at £2,498 14s 2d.

 Enthusiasts of the Sapphire may have grumbled that the Jaguar was a car for ‘up-starts’ or ‘parvenus’, but there was no denying its appeal. Indeed, Motor Sport of September 1959 wrote of the Mk. IX that ‘Sir William Lyons once again produced a “winner,” at a price which is so highly competitive that it is difficult to see how Jaguar Cars Ltd. get away with it and still show handsome profits’. Unfortunately, the AS was also extremely expensive to build, as there was no production line in the factory. Every car was hand-built, and the profit was believed to be just £57 per unit.

Towards the end of the 1950s, Armstrong Siddeley merged with Bristol Aero Engines as Bristol Siddeley  - and the new management was not impressed by the automotive division’s turnover. The task of the Star Sapphire Mk. II was to improve this state of affairs, with a project launch-date at the 1960 Earls Court Motor Show. Asides from the bodywork alterations, the Mk.2 boasted a positively decadent cabin, with reclining front seats, safety belts fore and aft, “quick release” windows and even air-conditioning.

But even such a magnificent machine was not enough to convince Armstrong Siddeley’s masters to continue with motor car production. By July 1960, the Star Sapphire was no more, with the Mk.2 prototype serving as the transport for Bristol Siddeley Engines’ chairman. Today, this magnificent machine lives in dignified retirement – a testament of a lost future for one of Britain’s most significant automotive marques.

With any such vehicle, there is the inevitable temptation to speculate how the Star Sapphire Mk.II might have fared in the 1960s. The original model did not precisely look contemporary in 1958, and its successor would have looked very dated as compared with a Jaguar Mk. X. Yet, this was an essential aspect of the Mk.II’s appeal, for as with the Daimler Majestic-Major it is a Q-Car, one whose performance and road manners wholly belies its ostensibly sober appearance. Sewell described the Star as achieving a ‘peculiarly English ideal of mechanical refinement and appeal as a sporting driver’s carriage’ and this even more so with the second-generation version.

Finally, I hope the reader will not mind if I conclude with three impressions from my test of this stupendous motor vehicle for Classic Cars magazine. First, operating the dashboard-mounted control for the intermediate gear really was akin to ‘being in command of a steamship’. Second, ‘True automotive class’, as demonstrated by the Star Sapphire Mk.II, ‘is both indefinable and timeless’

Third, I continue to stand by one comment in particular. ‘Some large British cars of this era – I mention no names – lumber around corners in the style of an irate Robert Morley pursuing a teddy boy in a black and white comedy film but the Armstrong driver need have few qualms about approaching narrow bends’. Any large saloon that looks as stately as a galleon that can out-perform many a GT is an extraordinary vehicle indeed. And the Star Sapphire Mk. II is just such a motor-car.

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