Ineos Grenadier Picks Up Where Land Rover Defender Left Off—and Then Some

• When Ineos failed to secure the original Defender tooling from Land Rover, it decided to build, in essence, that beloved British off-roader’s spiritual successor, the Grenadier.

• Sporting all the requisite off-road bona fides—ladder-frame chassis, live axles front and rear, and steering box rather than a rack and pinions, as well as a two-speed transfer case and a locking center differential—the Grenadier proves fully capable in all types off far-from-the-pavement settings.

• Look for Ineos to spin off several more models from the Grenadier platform in the coming years.

Many rich guys have loved exotic cars enough to pay huge sums of money acquiring them. But none have spent as much on a new model as Sir Jim Ratcliffe. One of the UK’s wealthiest men, a billionaire thanks to his Ineos chemical group, Ratcliffe was so upset by the demise of the classic Land Rover Defender in 2016 that he tried to buy the tooling to keep it in production. Having been turned down by Land Rover, he instead resolved to fund the creation of a new model, one inspired by his favorite car and named after his favorite London pub, The Grenadier in Knightsbridge. This process including winning a legal battle with JLR over design rights, but that was just part of the huge cost of realizing the dream—Ratcliffe saying he has spent around €1.5 billion bringing the Grenadier to market. That’s $1.6 billion at current exchange rates.

The project expanded rapidly and expensively from the original idea. Austria’s Magna Steyr was contracted to do development work, with no fewer than 250 engineers moving from the creation of the current Mercedes-Benz G-Class straight onto the Grenadier project. After considering potential suppliers including Ford and Toyota, powertrain supply was contracted to BMW. The Grenadier will be launched in Europe with the choice between gasoline and diesel 3.0-liter six-cylinder engines, with some markets set to later gain the option of four-cylinder power.

But the defining moment came when, as Ratcliffe admits, Mercedes boss Ola Kallenius called him up to offer him an excellent deal on the Smart ForTwo factory in Hambach, France. Daimler had decided to shift its plans to build the Mercedes EQA and EQB from Hambach to a new plant in Hungary—would Ineos like to acquire it? Ratcliffe won’t say quite how much he paid for the factory, although he admitted it was a very good deal.

Even if it was free, the cost of fitting it out for an all-new model took a big chunk of that ten-figure investment. It also means that Ineos will have to utilize a high percentage of Hambach’s single-shift, 25,000 annual capacity for the project to pay off. That’s why the Grenadier will be sold around the world—including in the United States.

So should we be getting excited? The Grenadier’s boxy proportions, flat fenders and round headlights might make it look like the old Land Rover Defender—the one that was last officially sold in the US in 1997. Yet the reality is a considerably more advanced car. The basics are, better thought of as old-fashioned ‘ute than Sports Utility—a ladder frame chassis, live axles front and rear, and with a steering box rather than a rack and pinions. All versions will have an eight-speed automatic gearbox, the BMW sixes no longer playing nice with manuals, with drive then passing through a two-speed transfer case and a locking center differential before passing to each axle. Electronically controlled front and rear lockers will be optional.