Ineos Grenadier Review: A Flawed Indulgence You Can’t Help But Love

Until very recently, I lived on the fringes of the Cotswolds, and the Ineos Grenadier was everywhere. You couldn’t visit Daylesford without at least one rolling up containing a gileted, rosy-cheeked family on their way to buy some organic piccalilli and a truckle of waxed Adlestrop.

These Grenadiers were numerous, and clearly beloved by their owners, but almost never muddy. That’s not because it’s not good in the rough – it’s probably the most capable off-roader you can buy this side of a Unimog. I’ve scrabbled round a very soggy disused quarry in one, and it was barely troubled by it, something my sometimes colleague Phill Tromans backs up in our first drive.

But the cheapest Grenadier (besides the VAT-claimable two-seater Commercial version) costs £65,025. Our 1924 limited edition test car (a tie-up with posh jacket maker Belstaff, which is owned by the wider Ineos group) carried a price of £81,782.

Hardcore green-laners won’t be swapping their ratty bobtailed Disco 2s for it, then, and while it might find some business use on huge farms, country estates and remote construction projects, a Toyota Hilux could realistically do much of the same stuff for a lot less.

Clearly, with pricing like this, Ineos is going after at least a proportion of what marketing types might call ‘lifestyle customers’ – the same kinds of people that bought old-shape Defenders that very rarely left the tarmac. To them, the 800mm wading depth and two-speed transfer case are probably about as relevant as whether or not it can be driven on the moon. They just like the way it looks, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

It means, though, that to some extent, it needs to work as a normal car. If it can iron out some of the things that make old Defenders and the like a bit of a pain to drive, then it’s job done.

It gets off to a good start, because once you’ve hauled yourself up into the cabin, you find yourself sitting in a genuinely comfortable and supportive Recaro seat, with a wonderful view out of the big, flat windscreen. What’s more, there’s somewhere for your right arm to go, something that was too much of a challenge for Landie to conquer during the old Def’s lifespan.

Shame the same can’t be said about your left leg, which has to rest on a big lump because of part of the four-wheel drive gubbins intruding into the footwell. A problem specific to right-hand-drive cars, it can get a bit tiresome on a long journey. It’s surprisingly tight in the back, too.

Plush and luxurious it ain’t in here, but that’s the price you pay for a cabin that feels like it’s been designed to withstand many years of heavy usage. The bank of physical dials and knobs is very welcome in our touchscreen-heavy times, too.

The Grenadier comes with a choice of petrol or diesel engines, both 3.0-litre turbocharged BMW straight-sixes. Our car had the latter, and it’s a superb engine. It makes 245bhp and a mighty 406lb ft of torque, and it’s the latter figure that really makes the difference.

Ineos’ figures put the 0-62mph time at a leisurely 9.9 seconds, but at the bottom end, where it matters, there’s a huge amount of shove. This obviously helps when scrambling about off-road, but also when squirting out into a gap in traffic. ZF’s eight-speed 8HP automatic gearbox is deployed with its usual smoothness, too, although it’s sometimes a bit hesitant to change down when you want it to.

Even with the diesel, though, it’s a thirsty old hector. Ineos reckons on a 26.9mpg maximum, and real world, you’ll be doing well to crest 20. Good thing it has a 90-litre tank to space out the petrol station visits a bit.

The engine delivers its power as smoothly as you’d expect a straight-six to, although it’s certainly not the last word in refinement. This is more to do with the Grenadier’s old-school construction. At idle, you feel the vibration in the motor in a way you just wouldn’t if it were buried in something like an X5, but it’s tolerable.

In fact, ‘tolerable’ is a neat way of describing the Grenadier’s on-road driving experience. Obviously, there are compromises. The ladder chassis and beam axles mean you’re jostled about noticeably more than in a conventional SUV, but it has independent suspension rather than leaf springs, so it’s a lot less jiggly than it could be.

The big all-terrain BFGoodrich boots make more noise than a road-biased tyre, and you hear the wind battering against the bluff front end and the engine chugging away once you get up to speed. It’s still possible, though, to hold a conversation at motorway speed without having to resort to yelling.

Much has been made of the Grenadier’s steering, which is an old-fashioned recirculating ball setup. This is good for toughness and feedback off-road, but means lots of arm-twirling in tight spaces and plenty of unwinding the lock on the way out of corners. Again, it takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s nothing tear-inducingly irritating.

The upshot is that after doing a fairly lengthy motorway run in the Grenadier, I didn’t clamber out with bleeding ears and a shattered body. Temper your expectations a bit, and it can do normal car stuff.

I won’t waste more than a paragraph describing what it’s like to try and drive fast, though. It’s a 2.7-tonne off-roader with a 99mph top speed. The lean is comical if you try to corner quickly, and braking hard into a tight bend requires several planning meetings. That’s not to say you can’t have fun, though – like in an old Defender, it stems from trying to conserve momentum.

What it feels like, overall, is an old-school 4x4 – possibly one whose name rhymes with ‘Grand Dover Agenda’ – with a lot of the quirks and annoyances ironed out. Evidently, some of the old Defender crowd find it a worthier successor than the one Land Rover itself came up with, because the first time I drove it, a chap in a lovely old 90 gave me a headlight flash and an enthusiastic thumbs up. Then there's the multiple people that mentioned 'the Land Rover' I was driving.

That said, the new Defender costs similar money, can more than handle itself in any off-road situation a normal person is likely to face, and is smooth, quiet and easy-going the rest of the time. Unless they needed the Grenadier’s very specific skillset, I’d have a hard time recommending it to someone.

But I’d completely understand if someone spent a significant chunk of cash on one, even if it never saw anything more extreme than a wet car park at Wilderness Festival. Really, it’s a simple indulgence, the sort of car that gets under your skin, in spite of – perhaps even because of – its flaws.