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 enterprise, but 1 with a distinctly familiar look.

Just 3 a long time ago, in 2017, Ineos Chairman and car lover Sir Jim Radcliffe resolved to do some thing other car makers appeared to be shying absent from: produce a automobile with off-road ability at its coronary heart, a utilitarian car where type adopted perform.

This is the outcome, the first design from Ineos Automotive, and a car that requires its name from the pub where the notion was first formed. Car Specific was invited to Ineos HQ to acquire a look at the Grenadier and fulfill some of the workforce driving it.

At the helm of the new enterprise is Dirk Heilmann, an Ineos worker for twenty a long time but, like head of style and design Toby Ecuyer, with no preceding practical experience of the car sector, other than currently being a self-confessed petrolhead. So is that a trouble or profit for someone who’s CEO of a new car enterprise?

“A little bit of equally, genuinely,” Heilmann explained to us. “We’ve got a pretty talented bunch of automotive designers and engineers we’re functioning pretty intently with, which is massively valuable and beneficial. But similarly, I imagine, currently being from a diverse sector and contemplating about factors in a slightly diverse way, I imagine that’s also assisted a good deal as nicely.”

Equally, head of style and design Toby Ecuyer began his job as an architect, and a lot more recently has been designing super yachts. “If you can style and design 1 matter, you can style and design an additional,” he explained. “So, if you can style and design a toaster nicely, I imagine you can style and design a car genuinely nicely, way too. I imagine it is a lot more to do with your designing concepts than anything at all else. But I imagine it does have added benefits.”

Ex-Bentley and JLR male Mark Tennant is business director and disclosed the guiding concepts driving the project: main with off-road mobility, longevity and dependability, and style and design it is got to look cool.

Ineos has decided on its companions nicely to help achieve that. Magna – with a long time of practical experience of automotive style and design and engineering, as nicely as making the G-Course for Mercedes and the I-Rate for Jaguar – is functioning on the engineering. BMW will be giving six-cylinder petrol and diesel engines, and ZF will be giving the transmission units.

The bulk of the assembly was predicted to take position in a new manufacturing unit in Bridgend, South Wales, so the Grenadier would be British-developed, while Heilmann states it is “international” and Ineos is understood to be in talks around the attainable obtain of the Mercedes-owned Intelligent manufacturing unit in France.

It’s some way off – the first autos will be with clients in 2022 – but Heilmann states that revealing the automobile now implies the enterprise can get on with one.2 million miles of testing the car in simple sight.

The look the Ineos workforce settled on is pretty conventional, pretty comparable to an previous Land Rover Defender in condition and some of the detailing, but also with a lot more than a trace of Mercedes G-Course about it – unsurprising given Magna’s involvement, perhaps.

“We had been searching at all sorts of diverse automobiles,” Ecuyer discussed. “From Unimogs to armed forces automobiles to aircraft to lorries and vans. To the Willys jeep, naturally, and Land Rover, the Land Cruiser, Nissan Patrol, Bronco, actually everything. They are all pretty uncomplicated and pretty trustworthy. We imagined that was a fantastic position to try to intention for.”

Having the optimum out of the system – which utilizes a conventional, if not specifically large-tech, ladder-frame chassis and beam axles – was significant, as was earning the most of inside place. Which is why Ineos settled on a familiar, upright condition.

Simplicity of use and servicing had been also crucial, with characteristics this sort of as the ‘utility belt’ jogging all around the center of the car letting entrepreneurs to attach extras, and tethering eyes reduce down the doorways. And though Ineos will give a raft of extras, it will persuade entrepreneurs to use current kit and allow other businesses to create their personal extras. “It’s a universal procedure,” Tennant explained to us. “We want to be genuinely open-supply about it.”

Even the flat bonnet surfaces have been made to be realistic. “This is a genuinely practical surface to sit on, set your tea on, laptop computer on – it is pretty a great deal a workbench in heaps of means,” explained Ecuyer.

There is also a cubby box concealed driving a rear panel, exterior wiring points and  vertically break up rear doorways that open wide to expose a place that will acquire a Euro pallet.

General, Ecuyer states the Grenadier is, “Roughly the similar dimension as a G-Wagen. I imagine it is the similar top and length.”

What we won’t see for a though is the inside, but Tennant promises that it’ll be bang up to day. “We’ve got to have a level of comfort and ease that a 21st-century customer is going to assume,” he states. “You’ve got to have space for your elbows in the automobile. And you’ve got to have the degrees of connectivity, the screens, all the factors that individuals have the right to assume now.”

Tennant also promised innovation in how Ineos will provide the car. “We’ll be as direct as attainable,” he states, “We won’t be fully online – we want to give individuals the prospect to kick tyres and acquire a take a look at generate.”

On pricing, we recognize that at today’s price ranges the Grenadier would commence with a four. Having said that, with a classification of N1, it will officially be a business automobile, so VAT will have to be additional. That implies a whole starting cost potentially close to £50,000 for those who can not declare the tax again by their organization.

This is only the starting position for Ineos, even though. A double-taxi decide-up variation has been verified, though Dirk Heilmann has also promised that “we will have some electrification.” Rather of a full EV, that’s a lot more probable to be a hydrogen fuel-mobile established-up, which Heilmann states is nicely suited to the ladder-frame chassis. Function has previously began on the 2nd-era Grenadier, he hinted.

Do you want the new Ineos Grenadier to the Land Rover Defender? Let us know your feelings in the reviews section…