The 1981 MG Metro kicked off that fad (it had red seat belts too, though it wasn’t so hot under the bonnet) and it was soon followed by the Fiat Uno Turbo, the Peugeot 205 GTi, and Renault’s 5 GT Turbo, all of them sporting blood-red matting that would have shaved precisely no seconds at all off the 0-60mph time.