01
Origins
The Sapphire 346 of 1952 was Armstrong Siddeley's bid for the top table: a spacious luxury saloon with a new 3.4-litre six breathing through hemispherical combustion chambers, good for genuine 100 mph motoring, with pre-selector or manual transmission and coachwork of quiet distinction. It compared honestly with Jaguar's Mark VII and undercut Bentley by a distance, and for a few years it sold respectably to buyers who valued the sphinx's promise of silence. Smaller 234/236 companions followed less happily, and the final Star Sapphire of 1958 added power steering and automatic refinement. But Hawker Siddeley's board could see where the money lay, and it was not in cars; production ended in 1960 to concentrate on aero engines. The Sapphire closed a marque that had never once been vulgar.
Armstrong Siddeley Star Sapphire · Brian Snelson · CC BY 2.0
