Ineos Grenadier

FIRST DRIVE Behind the wheel of Brit firm’s spiritual successor to the original Defender

- Steve Fowler

TO really understand the Ineos Grenadier, you have to go back before the famed meeting in the West London pub that gave the new 4x4 its name.

Ineos boss Sir Jim Ratcliffe was on safari in Botswana when a chat with his guide turned to the demise of the old Land Rover Defender. He had about 600 Land Rovers,” Ratcliffe told us. And he was decrying what on earth he was going to do because Land Rover had just announced that they were ceasing production of the Defender.”

Ever the entrepreneur, a seed was sown in Ratcliffe’s mind, which started to germinate in that famous meeting in the Grenadier pub. So the Ineos Grenadier, the result of about a billion and a half Euros”, according to Ratcliffe, is a single-minded pursuit to build a true spiritual successor to the original Land Rover Defender. And that goes a long way to explaining the good and the not so good bits of the Grenadier.

The car has been engineered by contract engineering and manufacturing experts Magna Steyr, which has clearly worked hard to fulfil its brief. As Ratcliffe puts it: We’ve got British concept, design, marketing and we’ve got German engineering.”

The vision has resulted in old-school, some might even say old-fashioned, underpinnings mixed with a great example of industrial design it’s far from pretty) to make the Grenadier an uncompromising, no-frills, no-fuss vehicle that provides the best-in-class off-road capability, durability and utility”. Magna stuck to that brief, yet it’s clear that, to succeed, the car is more likely to be sold in the world’s swankiest neighbourhoods than to safari guides.