New Ineos Grenadier 4×4: prices, specs and video of the Land Rover Defender rival

This is the Ineos Grenadier – an all-new car from an all-new business, but a person with a distinctly common appear.

Just a few years in the past, in 2017, Ineos Chairman and car lover Sir Jim Radcliffe made a decision to do a little something other car makers appeared to be shying absent from: generate a car with off-road capacity at its coronary heart, a utilitarian car in which form adopted function.

This is the consequence, the very first product from Ineos Automotive, and a car that usually takes its name from the pub in which the notion was very first fashioned. Vehicle Specific was invited to Ineos HQ to just take a appear at the Grenadier and meet up with some of the group behind it.

At the helm of the new business is Dirk Heilmann, an Ineos staff for twenty years but, like head of structure Toby Ecuyer, with no former knowledge of the car industry, other than becoming a self-confessed petrolhead. So is that a dilemma or advantage for a person who’s CEO of a new car business?

“A little bit of equally, genuinely,” Heilmann told us. “We’ve bought a incredibly proficient bunch of automotive designers and engineers we’re working incredibly closely with, which is massively advantageous and practical. But similarly, I think, becoming from a different industry and contemplating about matters in a a little different way, I think that’s also assisted a great deal as properly.”

In the same way, head of structure Toby Ecuyer started his profession as an architect, and far more not too long ago has been developing super yachts. “If you can structure a person matter, you can structure a further,” he said. “So, if you can structure a toaster properly, I think you can structure a car genuinely properly, also. I think it’s far more to do with your developing concepts than something else. But I think it does have rewards.”

Ex-Bentley and JLR gentleman Mark Tennant is commercial director and disclosed the guiding concepts behind the job: top with off-road mobility, toughness and trustworthiness, and structure it’s bought to appear interesting.

Ineos has picked out its associates properly to help reach that. Magna – with decades of knowledge of automotive structure and engineering, as properly as making the G-Class for Mercedes and the I-Rate for Jaguar – is working on the engineering. BMW will be supplying 6-cylinder petrol and diesel engines, and ZF will be supplying the transmission units.

The bulk of the assembly was anticipated to take place in a new factory in Bridgend, South Wales, so the Grenadier would be British-created, although Heilmann suggests it’s “international” and Ineos is understood to be in talks around the possible purchase of the Mercedes-owned Wise factory in France.

It is some way off – the very first vehicles will be with buyers in 2022 – but Heilmann suggests that revealing the car now usually means the business can get on with 1.two million miles of testing the car in plain sight.

The appear the Ineos group settled on is incredibly classic, incredibly equivalent to an old Land Rover Defender in condition and some of the detailing, but also with far more than a trace of Mercedes G-Class about it – unsurprising presented Magna’s involvement, potentially.

“We had been wanting at all sorts of different vehicles,” Ecuyer explained. “From Unimogs to armed forces vehicles to plane to lorries and vans. To the Willys jeep, certainly, and Land Rover, the Land Cruiser, Nissan Patrol, Bronco, basically every little thing. They are all incredibly uncomplicated and incredibly straightforward. We thought that was a excellent place to attempt to aim for.”

Getting the utmost out of the system – which makes use of a classic, if not especially higher-tech, ladder-frame chassis and beam axles – was crucial, as was creating the most of interior space. Which is why Ineos settled on a common, upright condition.

Simplicity of use and routine maintenance had been also important, with options this kind of as the ‘utility belt’ running all over the middle of the car allowing for house owners to attach components, and tethering eyes reduced down the doorways. And when Ineos will offer a raft of components, it will inspire house owners to use current package and enable other firms to acquire their have components. “It’s a common process,” Tennant told us. “We want to be genuinely open up-supply about it.”

Even the flat bonnet surfaces have been designed to be practical. “This is a genuinely useful surface to sit on, set your tea on, laptop computer on – it’s incredibly a lot a workbench in lots of means,” said Ecuyer.

There’s also a cubby box concealed behind a rear panel, exterior wiring points and  vertically split rear doorways that open up huge to expose a space that will just take a Euro pallet.

General, Ecuyer suggests the Grenadier is, “Roughly the same sizing as a G-Wagen. I think it’s the same height and length.”

What we won’t see for a when is the interior, but Tennant claims that it’ll be bang up to day. “We’ve bought to have a level of consolation that a 21st-century purchaser is heading to assume,” he suggests. “You’ve bought to have home for your elbows in the car. And you’ve bought to have the ranges of connectivity, the screens, all the matters that persons have the appropriate to assume now.”

Tennant also promised innovation in how Ineos will promote the car. “We’ll be as direct as possible,” he suggests, “We won’t be solely on the net – we want to give persons the possibility to kick tyres and just take a check generate.”

On pricing, we understand that at today’s charges the Grenadier would start with a 4. Even so, with a classification of N1, it will officially be a commercial car, so VAT will have to be added. That usually means a whole beginning price most likely close to £50,000 for people who just cannot claim the tax again via their company.

This is only the beginning stage for Ineos, even though. A double-cab decide-up version has been confirmed, when Dirk Heilmann has also promised that “we will have some electrification.” As an alternative of a entire EV, that’s far more likely to be a hydrogen gasoline-mobile established-up, which Heilmann suggests is properly suited to the ladder-frame chassis. Function has already started on the next-technology Grenadier, he hinted.

Do you want the new Ineos Grenadier to the Land Rover Defender? Enable us know your views in the responses section…