As propaganda tools go, little is more effective than the sight and sound of a gargling, mid-mounted, highly strung six-pot echoing through a forest. The shriek of the Metro as it approached pummelled spectators from head to toe. It’s Megadeth on four wheels.
Were the 6R4 anything but a Metro, we might never have been gifted that sound. A larger, heavier Rover or Austin might have meant turbocharging would have been an acceptable compromise, and the resulting soundtrack may have fallen flat.
Nor, for that matter, would it have been so utterly outrageous to look at. Those comically extended arches were functional, but they gave the 6R4 plenty of billboard space to facilitate colourful liveries, and its popularity with privateers elicited a smorgasbord of memorable designs. The works Computervision livery, Jimmy McRae’s Rothmans scheme and the lurid P&O Ferries rallycrosser all come to mind.
But most of all I think it’s the 6R4’s cruel luck that gets me. While MG toiled away at making everything work, the rest of the field had properly figured out forced induction. By the time of the Metro 6R4’s launch in 1985, its boosted competitors were rumoured to be nudging 600bhp. No matter how much more drivable or dependable the 6R4 might have been, its tardiness doomed it to sit on rallying’s fringes. What could have been, if only it had arrived a year or two sooner?