JPB wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2020 6:14 pm
GHT, don't sugar coat it, just say whether you like a Metro or not!
Sugar coat, is that what you call that duck egg yellow. It looks like someone has had a skinful of eggnog and then the car has ended up wearing it. Imagine the hangover!
Some of us were around for the launch, when The Metro was backed by a jingoistic advertising campaign; extras waved the Union Flag to maritime music, as flotillas of foreign cars were forced back into the Channel by a phalanx of Metros and the tag read “A British Car To Beat The World."
Still, it worked on the gullible, as the Metro became the best-selling small car of its day. And that was despite it being fitted with Austin’s dated A-series engine and four-speed gearbox (as used in the Mini) at a time when rivals were using more modern motive power.
Updates would come in time, but even from the off the Metro proved to be popular thanks to its blend of space and affordability and not forgetting that even car thieves have standards. By the time production was called to an end in 1997 due to poor crash test results, Metro sales, including MG and Rover versions, had exceeded 2 million.
So, apart from it's dodgy mechanicals, what went wrong? Well, as with all British Leyland products, the Metro’s reputation was undoubtedly tarnished by prevailing images of angry strikers standing around a burning brazier somewhere in the Midlands. But perhaps the biggest problem was the fact that it was sold for too long and its styling, if you can call it that, dated in a way that the Mini’s never did.
In 1987, British Leyland was forced to cancel a Metro replacement because it couldn’t afford the development costs. Instead, it introduced an uprated Metro in 1990, which featured the more modern K-series engine. And by the time the car was re-badged as a Rover 100 in 1994, it looked about as contemporary as the average stegosaurus.
