The Story Of The Metro 6R4 PART ONE 

Still in my top ten cars I want to own I believe if group B lasted another few years I believe the 6r4 would have been turbo charged ie engine that ended up in the Xj220.

I feel sorry for cash strapped Austin Rover, they just underestimated the massive advance in turbo engines, left foot braking, which more than made up for their turbo lag against the normally aspirated metro, You can hear Tony Pond describing how the metro was 6 secs a mile quicker than any other car on the metros maiden voyage at some local rally, and Tony said, "has to be about 3 secs faster then the quattro", proving that Austin Rover had the 360 hp LWB quattro in mind when they built the Metro. despite the maestro David Wood and Williams GP racing team doing almost, if not all the difficult engine, chassis stuff, the Group B monsters that spawned in 1983/84/85/86 left the poor Metro leaving Group B rallying after 1 1/2 years with not a single world championship win.

got a sub for the upload

I was always under the impression that these were very robust beneath the superficial body panels, etc.

i think the guy with the comment above was refering to the strength of the shell and not the power of the engine!

It was not the strongest group B car, definatly not. The strongest that was introduced was the Audi Sport Quattro E2 S1 with 550-630hp and even heard rumours about that they planned to put out around 1000hp for the 1987 season wich did not come for the group B and it did not work because it was impossible in corners. The 6r4 had 420hp.

nice post ... :P

Great stuff, Tony Pond put in a lot of feedback into the development of the car. It was also probably the strongest group B car around due to an all metal body shell. Most say it may have benifited from a turbo engine, even though I can see the idea's behind "keeping it simple".