Been a while since I saw one of those,” shouted an Audi A6 driver as he squeezed past us photographing this Metro Turbo on a country lane in South Gloucestershire. And judging by the statistics available from DVLA, it’s going to be a while before he sees another: only around 35 of the cars are registered with DVLA of which the majority are on SORN, leaving something like just three taxed and ready to go.

We’ve touched on the surprisingly low survival rate of original (ie pre-Rover) Metros before but it’s particularly puzzling that so few of the range-topping Turbo have survived. You can blame the classic Mini fraternity partly, the blown A-Series making a useful performance upgrade for the Mini, while the Metro Turbo’s habit of shredding gearboxes didn’t help either. Throw in the less than wondrous build quality of ’80s Longbridge products and it all unfortunately begins to add up.

The idea of a go-faster Metro had been on the cards since the car was launched in October 1980 and in May 1982, in rolled the 1275cc MG on its pepperpot alloys. The MG purists were horrified and pleased in equal measure but the Metro – ‘A British car to beat the world’ – was flying high at that point and the throaty 72 bhp MG was just what the range needed to create a kind of modern day Cooper S. A few months later in October 1982, a turbocharged version of the MG was unveiled, running the A-Plus engine with a Garrett T3 turbo for a total of 93 bhp, the installation having been developed with assistance from Lotus’s R&D division. The Turbo remained a carb-fed engine and was a blow-through design using a special sealed version of the HIF44 SU carb with a clamp to prevent the plastic threaded dashpot cap flying apart under boost.

To read the complete test see the February 2012 issue of Classic Car Mart - latest issue available here