METRO 6R4 VIDEO

british innovation and a scottish driver



with a bit of hill rally car just for flavor!

---

I would rather drive a slow car fast as a fast car slow!
first rule of cars: get what makes you happy, your the one paying for it!

"200 road cars built for homologation"?

I thought the whole cool bit about the 6R4 is that they didn't screw around with road cars, they made 200 competition cars.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

Quote
Pete
"200 road cars built for homologation"?

I thought the whole cool bit about the 6R4 is that they didn't screw around with road cars, they made 200 competition cars.

Group B --with replaced the old Gp 4, require min run of 200 cars to qualify for the class minimum..
Everybody had to make 200...and they ahd to make the tricky bits in min run of 10%...

Group A, which took over from old Gp2, had to make min 5000 cars, as did Group N (which took over from Gp1)
The 5000 GpN cars qualified the model

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

i think road car is a loose term
there is a company in the uk that makes replica 6r4s from standard metros

road version

british cross country championship version

---

I would rather drive a slow car fast as a fast car slow!
first rule of cars: get what makes you happy, your the one paying for it!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2013 02:30PM by tdrrally.

Quote
john vanlandingham

Quote
Pete
"200 road cars built for homologation"?

I thought the whole cool bit about the 6R4 is that they didn't screw around with road cars, they made 200 competition cars.

Group B --with replaced the old Gp 4, require min run of 200 cars to qualify for the class minimum..
Everybody had to make 200...and they ahd to make the tricky bits in min run of 10%...

Yah, and Lancia made some Delta Stradales, Audi made a handful of Sport Quattros, Ford made a couple hundred RS200 road cars.

But I thought there *were* no 6R4 road cars, they just decided that the pretense of a road car version with its interior bits and other road-car concessions made no economic sense, so they made 200 competition cars, which was why there were so many privateers rallying and rallycrossing them. At least, it seems that way.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

maybe they sold the road bits as a trunk kit

the red car may be a prototype or a kit car

---

I would rather drive a slow car fast as a fast car slow!
first rule of cars: get what makes you happy, your the one paying for it!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2013 02:33PM by tdrrally.

Quote
tdrrally
maybe they sold the road bits as a trunk kit

the red car may be a prototype or a kit car

more like the fun bits in the trunk----or really in parts department for $$$$$

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

in the trunk, if it had one,lol
in that era i think it was in theory.

i think the metro 6r4 was in a gray area

---

I would rather drive a slow car fast as a fast car slow!
first rule of cars: get what makes you happy, your the one paying for it!

Quote
tdrrally
in the trunk, if it had one,lol
in that era i think it was in theory.

i think the metro 6r4 was in a gray area

No in that era a guy I met named Per Eklund, the last man who won a WRC round in a Saab 96 (Swedish Rally 1976), was excluded --DQed at a WRC event for the hole in the intake manifold being 0,3mm or .012" over the dimensions in the Homologation papers...It was a sand casting--rough finish and as cast, untouched.
No DQed.
There were no "grey areas". 200 cars, min 20 "evolution" kits.

The teams fought hard for that cause 400 in Gp4 was too much..
By 1993 they had whined and cried enough about the 5000 needed for GpA that the number was lowered to 2500...

It was only their hard lobbyingh that got the allowance for 1 homologated "Heavy duty gearbox" to be read as "they could all (The Japanese) beat a path to X-Trac, and spend 120-200K per box that allowed them to compete---since the original rules required retaining original gearbox casing..

(I was visiting over then around then, and talked with people working in the business.)



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Established in 1984, Xtrac has become recognised as the worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of transmission systems supporting a wide client base covering top level motorsport, transportation, defence and marine.

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---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

i remember something about the 6r4 not being road legal in the uk at the end of the groupe B era
old top gear segment

http://www.6r4.net/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=4

there was something odd about the metro and its homologation
i can't find the video at this time

Austin Rover Motorsport gave up on rallying at this point – and it would not be until 2001 that we would see another factory backed MG rally effort.
The car lived on in a couple of ways: road versions were eventually sold off at a bargain £13,000 a piece, many entering private hands to be used in rallycross events across Europe.

http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/cars/austin/metro-austin/video-mg-metro-6r4/

---

I would rather drive a slow car fast as a fast car slow!
first rule of cars: get what makes you happy, your the one paying for it!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2013 06:33PM by tdrrally.

Quote
tdrrally
i remember something about the 6r4 not being road legal in the uk at the end of the groupe B era
old top gear segment

http://www.6r4.net/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=4

there was something odd about the metro and its homologation
i can't find the video at this time

Austin Rover Motorsport gave up on rallying at this point – and it would not be until 2001 that we would see another factory backed MG rally effort.
The car lived on in a couple of ways: road versions were eventually sold off at a bargain £13,000 a piece, many entering private hands to be used in rallycross events across Europe.

http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/cars/austin/metro-austin/video-mg-metro-6r4/

Well you can't believe some of the stuff written SINCE about things back then---one example being HP in the cars...They've gone up by 100-150+ HP in recent (last 10-12 years) over what was ballyhooed then.
The biggest thing is the SPEEDS. At the end of the era the GpB cars average winning speed was just about 5 km/hr higher than the last of the winning Group 4 cars like the BDG powerd Escorts or the Fiats or the Ascona 400.
On average 3.1 mph faster...
Yeah they were eye popping but only 3.1mph faster on average---and that is with the same drivers (Blomqvist-Vatanen-Toivonen-Alen-Salonen)

maybe somebody has misunderstood the line where they said they sold them without "Type Approval"...that means they just sold them as "kits"...
But they had to pass MOT and have insurance so they had to be legal for road use..

I spent a couple of days back in 1993 between Monte carlo and Swedish rally at Will Gollop's shop. He owned a Saab dealership in Canterbury and we had be faxing back and forth about piles of Saab rally-cross junk he was dumping so I dropped and and gort to poke around and then pee myself when he fired up his rally-cross de-bore and de-stroked to 2.5 liter (he said) turbo thing with a bunch of stuff "where 'ave I's seen dis before, eh Guv?"
Will: "AHHHHHH you noticed! Well I got here to the shop one day and here's this box about yay big (indicated a fawking huge crate) so i peek in and there's a card "with compliments ---your friend, Jean-Luc Pallier"
So i call and say what is this stuff (manifolds, plenums, turbos, looms, turbos) and Jean-Luc said "Oh eeeteeeees some old Renault stuff I found laying around"

Yeah ex Renault F1 stuff.
Jean-Luc was big competitor and in fact de-throned Will in the next years Rallycross championship.

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

it may have been a miscommunication for sure

at any case it is a neat car from a different time

that in some way has stood the test of time

i like the way the power steering worked off the front diff, so if the car is not moving there is no power steering(british)

if i read this right the clubman 300 was the road version

"In Britain, the authorities, the owners & Austin Rover Motorsport had a problem - where could the Metro 6R4 be used in anger? Following some lengthy meetings, the Metro 6R4 achieved its first 'stay of execution' when the authorities agreed to let the car compete on British national rallies if they were reduced in power to no more than 300bhp. What was then devised by Austin Rover Motorsport was the 'Clubman 300' specification Metro 6R4 - advertised for a bargain price of approx £16,000 (although this was negotiable, sometimes incredibly!), it was basically the same car as the original 'Clubman' except for an engine which gave about 50bhp more, but at a price 2/5ths of the original's! This would serve two purposes. Firstly, the authorities could still accept entries on national rallies from Metro 6R4 competitors (of which there were still a large quantity). And secondly, Austin Rover Motorsport could quite easily clear their compound of this, effectively redundant, Group B supercar. During the latter part of 1986 and early 1987, Austin Rover advertised the car so extensively that within 10 months they had sold every single car - one enterprising company even bought a batch of 40 to prepare as road cars!"

---

I would rather drive a slow car fast as a fast car slow!
first rule of cars: get what makes you happy, your the one paying for it!

McRae doing his thing in the same metro as the original post... but this time, with a lot more pucker!

They definitely made road car versions of the 6R4. Back when they were blowing them all out for pennies on the dollar after Group B was banned a guy in the Mini club I was in bought one and imported it over here. Went over to England to pick it up and actually got some driver training from Malcolm Wilson. He couldn't license it for the street over here, of course but he took it out to track days. I got a ride in it around SIR. He tiptoed through the corners because it still had forest suspension and Michelin rally tires on it but the acceleration and noise was wonderful.

good news to hear from an eyewitness

what happened to his 6r4?

---

I would rather drive a slow car fast as a fast car slow!
first rule of cars: get what makes you happy, your the one paying for it!