A company helps a perhaps somewhat forgotten Group B rally hero take the spotlight again: an all-new MG Metro 6R4 is coming!
When you think of Group B, you probably quickly think of the Audi Sport Quattro and various Lancias. The fact is that many brands looked at rally sport with a slanted eye and many brands planned or actually built a car. A somewhat forgotten addition to the world’s wildest rally cars came from none other than Austin Rover.
Austin/MG/Rover Subway
The life of the Metro actually starts so easily. From its birth in the 1960s to the end of the 1990s, the Mini Cooper has been a drag. It was never possible to match or replace such a success, despite attempts. Like the Metro, which in typical British Leyland logic came on the market as Rover, MG and Austin. A nice modal car intended to compete with the smallest hatchbacks of yesteryear. Simplicity in particular played a major role.
MG Metro 6R4
An unexpected basis for one of the fattest rally guns from the 80s. The MG Metro 6R4 (6 cylinder, Rear Engine, 4 WheelDrive) was to become the fist that Austin Rover would make against the established order in the rally world. The car came on the market in 1985 and then the homologation target in terms of production was also achieved, also in 1985 the car managed to finish third and make its presence very clear. Reliability of the V6 threw a spanner in the works in 1986 and the abolition of Group B made it right all she wrote for the 6R4 his career.
The 6R4 shares almost nothing with the MG Metro that served as a basis. The engine moved to the rear, the car got enormously extended wheel arches and the four-wheel drive system was also nowhere to be found in the standard Metro. The engine in question, by the way, was a 3.0 liter V6 based on a Cosworth block, but completely custom modified for the 6R4. There was a number plate on the 6R4 as ‘Clubman’ where the V6 put about 250 hp on the road. The rally version was not allowed on the road and the block squeezed out about 410 hp. Fun fact du jour: after the abolition of Group B, Austin Rover stopped everything about the 6R4 and rallying in general, which meant that the engines for the 6R4 ended up with Tom Walkinshaw Racing in 1987, who used them as an aggregate for the Jaguar XJ220. With big turbos, but basically the 6R4 shares its engine with the well-known XJ220.
Revival
That’s history in a nutshell, because fans of the MG Metro 6R4 have the chance to enjoy the device again. Motorsport Tools (MST) from Wales is working on a ‘new’ MG Metro 6R4. ‘New’ with quotation marks, because in terms of bodywork, the recognizable lines of the 6R4 remain the guiding principle. Yet it’s all been redesigned from the ground up and the new body is carbon fiber.
Audi V6
What that new carriage does in terms of weight is not known, but MST already has a whole plan for the powertrain of the new MG Metro 6R4. The drive is provided in the newcomer by a V6 engine from Audi. It would be the 3.0 V6 from the S4 (B8) that produces about 450 hp. A sequential Sadev six-speed gearbox handles the gears.
Production!
And yes: the car will be taken into production as a street-legal MG Metro 6R4! MST promises five production cars that will be sold for £ 295,000 (333,808 euros). You can choose between a car intended for the street or a completely stripped one for rally sport. The chassis will most likely be a bespoke and reinforced chassis unique to the new 6R4 sourced from MST itself.
A great project to give the perhaps somewhat forgotten MG Metro 6R4 a second life and it sure is cool!
This article ‘The other’ rally hero is being revived appeared first on Autoblog.nl.
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