The looks of the old Defender are there but the finer points of the Grenadier’s design lag behind the Land Rover
At the beginning I marvelled at the Ineos Grenadier. Not for the way it drove because I’d been otherwise engaged when it was launched and had not had the opportunity: it was the ambition. Starting anew car company today is not like it was in the 1950s where almost anyone with a shed and a talent for bending metal could start a car firm. Today, just making a car regulatorily compliant in every major market around the world is utterly daunting.
So, clever chap that he is, Ineos boss and one of Britain’s richest blokes Sir Jim Ratcliffe got others to do it instead. The names of those involved make an entire smorgasbord of the great and the good of European OEMs. The car was engineered by Magna in Austria and is built in a factory in France using the same workers who used to make Smarts there for Mercedes-Benz. The petrol and diesel 3-litre six-cylinder powertrains come from BMW, the eight-speed autobox through which both run from ZF.