Wednesday 12th July 2017

Metro 6R4 Superprix: Time for Tea?

Remind yourself why road races are magnificent with this grid of Metro 6R4s

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This evening, ahead of this weekend's British Grand Prix at Silverstone, there'll be a parade of F1 cars in London.

No doubt 'F1 Live' will be marvellous and quite exciting and everything. And thanks to the incredible hard work by the Motorsports Association (MSA), in helping local authorities to suspend the Road Traffic Act without an Act of Parliament there's an ever increasing hope that we'll be able to see racing cars going quickly on the road more often.

Which, inevitably, means our minds are drawn to one thing: the Birmingham Superprix, the annual summertime race event held between 1986 and 1990 near Birmingham city centre, which did require its own Act of Parliament to get approved.

But thankfully it did, because it was terrific. The headline act was the F3000 race - one rung below F1 at the time - but there were a number of support races, too, including rounds of the British Touring Car Championship.

And in 1988 and 1989 there were, can you imagine it, Metro 6R4 challenge races, solely for 'Clubman 300' spec Metro 6R4s, whose owners were facing a limited number of places where they could compete, following Group B rallying's demise.

And, well, not a lot more needs to be said, except here it is that 1988 race. Enjoy. And, perhaps, dare to dream.

 

Matt Prior

[Photo: LAT Photo]

[RedAndy]

I had expected them to be a bit faster...

..oh, skip to 4.20 and they do get much faster!

[pozi]

I like the Metro 6R4 but what a boring race.

[sgtBerbatov]

If Liberty Media are reading this, may I suggest Birmingham as a location for the British Grand Prix. London never built a car in it's life, all the Taxi's are built in Coventry, and Birmingham built the Ausin Metro as well as Rover SD1.

What's London got? A wheel? So what. We have one of them every year too.

What's that? London has a river? So what we've got more miles of canals than Venice! And London for that matter!

London has the queen?! Who's she? WE'VE GOT WHITE DEE!!!!

[PistonBroker]

Fantastic stuff!

I was there. Went for two years on the trot.

Our childminder's boyfriend was a cameraman at Central TV so I managed to get a decent view by jumping up with him as well. In fact, I'm friends with him on FB nowadays and he's still making me jealous with some of the places he gets to film at!

Edit: Just remembered the 'Motorsport is dangerous . . ' sign that adorned my bedroom door for many years after was from here. It just fell of the fence Guv'nor, honest! :-p

[s m]

PistonBroker said:

Fantastic stuff!

I was there. Went for two years on the trot.

I went as well - the noise was fantastic ( always seemed louder in the forests at night though )

[cuprabob]

PistonBroker said:

Fantastic stuff!


Our childminder...

Was she fit?

[generationx]

s m said:

I went as well - the noise was fantastic ( always seemed louder in the forests at night though )

6R4s in the forest were a defining noise of mid-80s rallying

[rastapasta]

cuprabob said:

PistonBroker said:

Fantastic stuff!


Our childminder...

Was she fit?

yeah answer the question..

[Mike348]

I was there in '86, can't forget the torrential rain that day. Austin Rover Motorsport's decision to go with V64V engine for 6R4 was bold when turbo-fours were the solution. Still, it did the XJ220 no harm... swings and roundabouts.

[coppice]

It did the Jag a lot of harm - nobody wanted to buy it when the much vaunted V12 4wd turned into a 2wd V6T which sounded like a bag of spanners. Thus matching the looks , some might say (absurd length and width , huge overhangs etc ) .

But the 6R4 sounded sublime - and still does ,as the odd one or two are still actively rallying .