Rover Metro (Rover 100) - a much maligned modern British classic!

Rover Metro The Rover Metro was a step up from the Austin Metro of the old days, gone was the A series engine and in comes something fresh, with the supermini styling - still running against the Mini the Austin variant was supposed to replace - but now with K series and the hydrgas suspension. This wasn’t a new idea for a new decade though, because as far back as two years post Austin Mini Metro launch, they’d been thinking about what would follow the British car to bear the world. This is because the competition aren’t messing around, the supermini market at this point in automotive history is big business and instead of the 60s and 70s where BMC/BL are looking at homemarket competition, they’re now in the 80s and looking at the overseas competition from the likes of Fiat, Peugeot and Renault as well as the likes of Ford, all of whom are gaining market share which the company desperately needed. Recognising the strengths of competition, the company decides it needs to increase the vehicle size to compete and to also accomodate the new K series engine. The development, named AR6, was to have 3 and 5 door variants and keep the spacious interior which nuyers had enjoyed thus far in the Austin Metro. However, these early ambitions are then marred by external factors such as the performance of existing models and the poor performance despite hefty government input. What’s unfair here is, is the government were impatient and had their mind set on selling the Rover group - so really - they were just steamrollering to their conclusion and didn’t want to help make the Metro the car it could’ve and should’ve been. In the late 80s, they bin off the AR6 and in comes project R6, which is essentially a concoction of dialled back ingredients from the AR6 - with the view they were to hurry a car to market to try and bring in money not just spend it. This means cut backs across the board and the advancements which should’ve taken place, just didn’t. Various factors including accomodating the slashed budget, the existing car’s monocoque and pressure to bring a car to showroom meant the new car didn’t have the night and day wow factor the R65 could’ve had although the car did look decidedly more modern for the new decade. The Hydragas set up remained from the earlier cars for a number of reasons including the cost to re-engineer floor pans to take on a new suspension set up but Alex moulton, the inventor of the Hydragas suspension set up, came in and showed the company that a new front to rear interconnection could provide a more sophisticated take on what buyers already recognised. The most interesting bit about this is, is that Dr Moulton actually modified his own Metro to demonstrate what he meant and it’s only after him doing that and him lending his car to influential parties that the penny finally dropped. The driving position is then improved and it’s then onto naming convention. As I discuss later on, people get a bit funny about it being badged a Rover because Rover was always something very different entirely and it’s then known as the Rover Metro in some markets and the Rover 100/Rover 114 in others - sometimes interchangeably! It does well at first, winning hearts and minds of jaded journalists and being priced under £10,000 it was a respectable budget buy. The Rover 100 is then launched in January 1995 as the 100 - not the Metro - with too few changes to move it away firmly from the Metro name. This meant sales started to dwindle away with the vision of replacing the car for a new millenium. The plan had been to quietly retire the car, but a Euro NCAP crash test went out - showing the car received one star and showed the performance in an accident fell well below minimum standards expected and just like that, the public stopped buying the car thanks to what we’d now deem, a viral press and media response to the crash test. The car is then withdrawn from sale at the end of 1997.