Don't like the adverts?  Click here to remove them

Ineos Grenadier

On paper it certainly has potential. Chassis is from Toyota. Don’t think £30k will come close though....
 
Article says £40k, so its into 70 series territory. Will be interesting to see how it pans out
 
tbh can't see why you would buy it if the 70 available in your neck of the woods
 
tbh can't see why you would buy it if the 70 available in your neck of the woods
Unfortunately the 70 isn't available here - pipe dream is to import one from Oz or SA one day.....or drive it back!
 
Don't like the adverts?  Click here to remove them
6 cylinder engines diesel or petrol was a good move even if they are bmw , looks like the defenders little sister .
 
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder i always thought "if only it was a foot wider"

1593633583904.png


For comparison and very therapeutic watching i thought :lol:
 
Last edited:
It's an interesting car, if they can nail down the reliability then it could give the other manufacturers something to think about.
 
Not sure they've got it right , yes it looks like the old Defender but that has already put constraints on what could have been a brilliant clean sheet vehicle design .

Looking closer the front brakes are sliding pin calipers .....they will seize the first time you go off road.... even the old defender had opposed piston calipers .

Diffs are built into the axle so no quick diff swap and on your way or in harsh environments you can't simply carry a ready built diff

Wind noise at cruise is going to be intrusive because it's the same shape as a Defender but hopefully quieter inside with less rattles at 70 mph .

If this can pass EU crash test then so can a 70 series so no competition for me ....70 every time
 
I don't see much imagination here. I see a guy with sufficient funds that was not allowed to buy the tooling for the Defender by Jaguar Land Rover spitting out his dummy and building his own version. The designer is an architect - IMO it looks like a brick and not particularly stylish in a practical way, as it should have looked.
BMW inline cyl engines are, according to BMW specialist sites, good for 250-300,000 miles before needing a rebuild. If it's a V6 then the power curve is not great for an off roader. Just compare that with some of the mileages that members on here have with their LCs.
On the plus side maybe this ends up as a reliable Defender, well at least for the first 300K, but only time will tell.
Interesting that they evaluated an FJ40 when the 70 series should have been in that evaluation group.

I agree with Grimbo that this is an opportunity missed.

Regards,

Rodger
 
The more I think about, and join the dots a bit with some comments from others, the more that I see that it is a vanity project from Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He cracked the sh!ts with Land Rover as Rodger says, and that seems to be his motivation.

Yes, Land Rover dropped the ball with the new Defender, but to build a near carbon copy of the original is just as daft. It needed a revolution, not an evolution. LR did the revolution (but perhaps a bit too far) and the Ineos is just an evolution that fits into what LR should have done in the mid 1990s - in effect a Series 2 Defender.

Move forward the 35 years since the 90/110 was launched, and the Ineos does not represent that jump forward; put it this way, the leap needed to be as big (or bigger) as it was from the Series 1 to the early 90 and 110s. At that time the 90 and 110 had:
New suspension? Tick.
New engines? Mostly.
New body styling? Tick.

The Ineos does do some of that, but does not at the same time.

Look at how many evolutions of the Hilux have been launched since 1984, by my count it's about 5 - even Land Cruisers have had 4 in the big 'uns, and the same in Prado/Colorados.

Yes, the American's sound like they're going to love it, and I'm sure the same Townie buyers who discovered some of the last Defenders (and want to be seen in a "proper" defender, not the new one - conspicuous consumption at it's best) will leap on it as well.

To rival the Hilux etc, it'll have to start at £21k+VAT, not at the £40k they're talking about - so straight away it's out the ball park in £ terms, and that possibly reveals as much about where they see their market as anything.
 
I like it, I’d like it better if it has a better driving position than the defender, it’s as good looking as a defender, well it would because that’s obviously what it’s based on. But, if they have taken the obvious “ niggles” and dealt with them, it’ll be a good truck . And in the absence of a Toyota in this country ( UK) it could be a runaway success, I hope it is. If I could buy a new 80 series with a “modern compliant” Diesel engine that would be my first choice, but I can’t and I will continue with the “ rolling” restoration, but, if the grenadier comes up with goods, that may be on the shopping list, who knows?
I would also add that if I was well off, I’d ship my bruiser off to the states and ask Icon to do their “ thing” on it. what do you think? Would you?
 
So it could indeed be a vanity project but what puzzles me is why the tooling wasn’t made available? What else were/are they going to do with it? Scrap metal prices aren’t that high are they? Do they benefit financially from a limited stock of defenders on the road that need spares made with the tooling? Probably not. I’m clearly missing something but the defender (and all series land rovers of course) are so culturally iconic to the uk that as it’s almost criminal that they weren’t made available to someone who wanted to use them - at a price.
 
Sell 6 decades of success while trying to convince all previous and all would have been Defender buyers that they would be happier with a girls car :think: nope no idea why they wouldn't sell the tooling .
 
I like it, I’d like it better if it has a better driving position than the defender, it’s as good looking as a defender, well it would because that’s obviously what it’s based on. But, if they have taken the obvious “ niggles” and dealt with them, it’ll be a good truck . And in the absence of a Toyota in this country ( UK) it could be a runaway success, I hope it is. If I could buy a new 80 series with a “modern compliant” Diesel engine that would be my first choice, but I can’t and I will continue with the “ rolling” restoration, but, if the grenadier comes up with goods, that may be on the shopping list, who knows?
I would also add that if I was well off, I’d ship my bruiser off to the states and ask Icon to do their “ thing” on it. what do you think? Would you?
Been done by many but if I had the cash my 80 would go to Australia for a ground up rebuild and mods including fitting a 1HD FTE......
And it would return with a modified 200 series to keep it company .....the Aussies have the edge in building Cruisers IMHO
 
Go right back to its origins whoever you choose to believe did it first and we have war to thank for the successful design of the Defender , i can't be bothered researching it now but i'm sure i've read more than once that life expectancy of these trench to trench taxi's was less than 24 hours . And when the fighting was done it was real handy to be able to hobble together with hammer and string something derivable from surviving parts from several bust donor vehicles .

Looking for similar inspiration in peacetime VW beetle and Lada come to mind ............... and Clarkson trying to destroy a Hilux .
 
Back
Top