Possibly the coolest thing ever to happen to the Metro, Group B turned a humble shopping car (ok, I’ll let you have the MG Metro Turbo was at least a bit fun) into a mid-engined V6 monster. Wings, scoops, a shape that was entirely based on the box, the 6R4 remains a legend.
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The 6R4 was a rallying icon. The Widebody versions looked incredible with all of the fancy aerodynamicaly clever parts strapped on it. In other words, they made it look like an incredible rally car which was based on a box!
I was lucky enough to see one of these in the flesh at the Williams F1 Museum and it’s just an amazing thing! Does anyone know what the link is to Williams F1 as even though it was there it didn’t explain the link?
400bhp in a crappy two-box hatchback? Wowza! You couldn’t get your granny’s Metro to sound like that either.
But who honestly thought of it, who looked at a passing Rover Metro and thought “Hmmm, that could take on an RS200 easily” ?
@PCATaylor: It was designed and built for Austin Rover motorsport by two engineers from the Williams F1 team.
Thank you very much Kuang, that explains it.
Last years British Rallycross Championship was won by a Metro 6R4: the car is still competitive now!
Having said that it wasn’t at the cutting edge of Group B, as it was still lacking a turbo at the time: it took the initiative of private owners after the end of Group B to turbo charge the 6R4.
That, and the complete lack of reliability caused by early revisions of what was basically a makeshift engine
It did get better, but in the early days it was a dog.
Gaaaah why does every Youtube video have to have a bloody soundtrack?
The 6R4 provides its own!
Yeah, can’t argue with that! (torquesteer) Useless fact of the day: the engine from the 6R4 later appeared (with Turbochargers) in the Jaguar XJ220.
To Slag; this is a common complaint of mine with most of the car videos on You Tube! Heres a couple of videos of my own featuring the 6R4; the quality is not as good as the video above, but the audio is pure car!
http://www.youtube.com/wa tch?v=OklekJMvWKw
http://www.youtube.com/wa tch?v=6xqJoy1_Oy0
That’ll always be the car that if I could own anything, I’d have that.