Metrovick started as a way to separate the existing British Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company factories from United States control, which had proven to be a hindrance to gaining government contracts during the First World War.

Problems worsened in 1929 with the start of the Great Depression, but Metrovick's overseas sales were able to pick up some of the slack, notably a major railway electrification project in Brazil.

By 1933 world trade was growing again, but growth was nearly upset when six Metrovick engineers were arrested and found guilty of espionage and "wrecking" in Moscow after a number of turbines built by the company in and for the Soviet Union proved to be faulty.

During the 1930s Metropolitan Vickers produced two dozen very large diameter (3m/10 ft) three-phase AC traction motors[6] for the Hungarian railway's V40 and V60 electric locomotives.

In 1938 they reached an agreement with the Ministry to build a turboprop design developed at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) under the direction of Hayne Constant.

As this type of work was very different from its traditional heavy engineering activities, a new factory was built on the western side of Mosley Road and this was completed in stages through 1940.

There were significant problems producing this aircraft, not least being the unreliability of the Rolls-Royce Vulture engine and that the first 13 Manchesters were destroyed in a Luftwaffe bombing raid on Trafford Park on 23 December.

With the design of the much improved four-engined derivative, the Avro Lancaster, MV switched production to that famous type, supplied with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines from the Ford Trafford Park shadow factory.

In addition to building aircraft, other wartime work included the manufacture of both Dowty and Messier undercarriages, automatic pilot units, searchlights and radar equipment.

The post-war era led to massive demand for electrical systems, leading to additional rivalries between Metrovick and BTH as each attempted to one-up the other in delivering ever-larger turbogenerator contracts.

[8] The Bluebird K7 jet-propelled 3-point hydroplane in which Donald Campbell broke the 200 mph water speed barrier was powered with a Metropolitan-Vickers Beryl jet engine producing 3,500 lbf (16 kN) of thrust.

Another major area of expansion was in the diesel locomotive market, where they combined their own generators and traction motors with third-party diesel engines to develop in 1950 the Western Australian Government Railways X class 2-Do-2 locomotive and in 1958 the type 2 Co-Bo, later re-classified under the TOPS system as the British Rail Class 28.

Intended as part the British Railways Modernisation Plan, the twenty-strong fleet saw service between Scotland and England before being deemed unsuccessful and withdrawn in the late 1960s.