Ineos Grenadier First Test: Old School Cool, Off Road Ready
The Ineos Grenadier looks a lot like a Defender
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00:00Are you the kind of person that's afraid of change?
00:05Do you think that all modern day cars are far too complicated, and that everything was
00:09better in the olden days?
00:11If that's the case, then this might just be the vehicle for you.
00:15Ineos Grenadier, look familiar?
00:31Yeah, it looks quite a lot like the Land Rover Defender, doesn't it?
00:36The Land Rover Defender was in constant production for well over six decades, until a few years
00:43ago, Jaguar Land Rover made the difficult decision to stop producing the classic off-roader.
00:49Well, one night, British billionaire and petrochemical company owner Jim Ratcliffe, Sir Jim Ratcliffe
00:56I should say, was in his favourite pub, the Grenadier, in Belgravia, in London, and he
01:02was talking with his friends about this.
01:06He was really annoyed.
01:07He loves the Defender.
01:09He thinks it's the perfect off-road machine, symbol of Britain, to be celebrated.
01:17So anyway, back to Jim Ratcliffe.
01:18He was upset that Jaguar Land Rover were going to stop making the Defender, and he was in
01:24his favourite pub, and he said one night, well, why don't we just make a Defender?
01:31Why doesn't my company, Ineos, make a Defender?
01:34And that is how the Grenadier, which was the name of the pub they were in, came to be.
01:39It took well over three years to develop the car.
01:45Goes through the process of designing their own version of the Defender.
01:49It is, to be clear, not a Defender that's been modernised.
01:51This is a new vehicle.
01:52Ratcliffe just shares a lot, and I do mean a lot, of visual DNA with the Defender.
01:58So here we have it, the Ineos Grenadier.
02:00I'm going to let you in on a little secret.
02:03I'm going to say something now that I hoped I wouldn't have to say, and that is that unfortunately,
02:10I find the Grenadier a little bit underwhelming on road.
02:16Now obviously, the original Defender's natural habitat was never on road, right?
02:22It was made for agricultural use, primarily.
02:27No one in their right mind would wantonly drive one of the old Defenders on the road
02:33for pleasure.
02:34That wasn't a pleasurable experience.
02:36You simply drove it from agricultural space to agricultural space.
02:40And, you know, with the Grenadier, they set out with the ambition of making an updated
02:46Defender.
02:47And they're going to have done that, but that means that a lot of the Defender's road
02:51characteristics, for me at least, prevail.
02:54The steering, there's so much play in the wheel and so much rotation, the ratio is incredible.
03:00You can turn this wheel, I don't know, 18 or 19 hundred times, seemingly, before you
03:05find the lock.
03:06Look at this, which again, is like an old school Defender, right, so it's charming,
03:10but on the road, it's very hard to keep the car in a straight line, there's a lot of play
03:14in the wheel.
03:15You're making lots of micro-adjustments and swerving around a little bit as a result,
03:20at which point, the fact that this is a body-on-frame car, and it's quite top-heavy, comes into
03:28play and you do end up getting quite a lot of lean and body roll, which is a little disconcerting
03:32from time to time.
03:33There's no blind-spot detection, you can't see anything out of the rear mirror because
03:38there's a full-size spare in the way.
03:41And the power from the inline 6-litre turbocharged BMW engine is not great, 281 horsepower and
03:49333 pound-feet of torque sounds okay, it's quite slushy, it'll get up to highway speeds,
03:58but trying to overtake is a lengthy and drawn-out process.
04:01Now, again, I'm going to caveat all of that by saying, it's not really what this vehicle's
04:07raison d'etre was, right?
04:09This vehicle, as with the Defender, was all about being able to get out there.
04:14And look, we've made it out here, we're out on the trails.
04:17This is where the Ineos Grenadier should show its true colours.
04:22Now it's interesting, that very point that I was just lamenting the Grenadier for, steering,
04:29actually comes into its own here.
04:32And I think that was probably part of the reason why the steering feels the way it does,
04:37because off-road, where you're having to make lots of miniature adjustments, or rather
04:42the wheels are making lots of miniature adjustments underneath the body of the car, as they're
04:46traversing all these rocks and cracks and crevices, and that obviously transfers up
04:51through the steering wheel, well they don't want this much of a rotation to result in
04:56you flying off into that bush over there, right?
04:58So look, I've got all of this movement, and this can go both ways, it can be me moving
05:03the wheels or the wheels moving the steering wheel, and look, I'm still basically tracking
05:06straight.
05:07So that's a good thing.
05:09Again, the power, nice and torquey, now we're out on the off-road, you can feel the benefit.
05:23At Motor Trend, we're always looking for new ways to push vehicles to their limits.
05:27Not just on the road, but on all kinds of incredible off-road trails.
05:31From rock crawling to multi-day overland adventures, we use OnX Off-Road from start to finish,
05:38and even when stuff goes sideways.
05:40No cell reception?
05:41No problem.
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05:49track of where you've been, and where you're going.
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05:56and more, we use OnX Off-Road every time we get out of town.
06:01If you want to discover places like the ones we explored today, scan the QR code, or click
06:07the link in the bio, to learn more about OnX Off-Road.
06:13What else can I tell you?
06:14Well, the interior.
06:15We've got a big screen here, but one of the things that does frustrate me, and this isn't
06:20exclusive to the Grenadier, but Ineos have fallen into this trap, is that the screen
06:24is not angled at all toward the driver, it's flush, it's straight, and that means that
06:30I'm getting screen glare from that window back there, 150% of the time.
06:35So frustrating, because half the time I'm having to do this, to check where I'm going.
06:40So there we are.
06:42But otherwise, I quite like the interior, with one exception, and that is this.
06:47This BMW shifter is unforgivable.
06:52Whether it was something that BMW insisted on, I don't know why they would, but hey,
06:57who knows, it certainly couldn't have been laziness on Ineos' part, because that would
07:00be foolish.
07:01They've spent so much time, clearly, crafting an interior that is, you me, this is their
07:08first vehicle, remember?
07:09Even though they're loosely basing it on the Defender, they of course want this vehicle
07:13to feel like an Ineos.
07:14At the end of the day, they, I'm sure, have aspirations to expand their model line-up,
07:19they already have the Quartermaster, the truck version, but I'm sure that in the future
07:22they'll have more vehicles.
07:25And they've done great work in here, with the exception of this BMW shifter, it just
07:31genuinely makes me angry every time I see it, it makes me really frustrated.
07:36It would be the first thing I would change, that and adding a roof rack.
07:39There's no roof rack on this model, despite it being the Trailmaster off-road version,
07:45despite it having the optional ladder.
07:48What is the point in having the optional ladder if you can't also have a roof rack at the
07:52same time?
07:53They should be one and the same, surely.
07:56Interior's nicely decked out, this is the Trailmaster variant, which is the slightly
08:03more rugged version with cloth seats.
08:05We do have an optional leather package up here on the dashboard, but for the most part
08:08it's sort of wiped down friendly.
08:12I like the positioning, I like that there isn't a gauge cluster here, we've just got
08:15a little screen for my various warning messages and things of that nature.
08:22I like that we've got this great big panel up here, of course, reminiscent of a plane.
08:28They know the market they're going for, don't they?
08:30Ultimately it's the kind of slick, off-road, maybe overland kind of James Bond, sycophant
08:37loving, all of the kind of ruggedness and, oh, I drive an updated Defender, you know?
08:45If I fall into that trap, I'd have one of these, it's so cool.
08:51So Ineos, Sir Jim and all of his team set out to bring to market a modern day Defender
09:00now.
09:01Have they succeeded?
09:02You'd have to say yes, they have succeeded, because this is a modern day Defender, quirks
09:08and all.
09:10The question you'll have to ask yourself is, is it worth the price?
09:14This one that I'm driving is around $85,000, which is a lot of money, but then again, if
09:21you're going to use it as a utilitarian vehicle on a farm or a building site, then I could
09:28plausibly see you buying one of these.
09:32You'll just have to accept that your drives to and from the construction site or the farm
09:37might not be as carefree and relaxing as they would be in something like the new Defender.
09:44The unfortunate truth is that Jaguar Land Rover made the decision to end the production
09:49of the Defender because they felt times had moved on, they felt that people wanted something
09:55more out of their utility vehicles.
09:58Is this a vehicle I would do hundreds and hundreds of miles in?
10:00Probably not.
10:01It would be a tiresome experience.
10:04But here, well, I've had a wonderful time in the Ineos, I've got to say.