2023 Ineos Grenadier review: Prototype drive

We’ve already experienced prototype versions of the Ineos Grenadier, from both the passenger and driver’s seat. So, you may well be asking what another turn in a very similar pre-production car is adding of value.

The answer is simple: mud and lots of it. Plus, we've got a chance to see the impressive new factory that will be building it.

Not that a huge amount of excuse is necessary for more coverage on what is becoming one of the most hotly anticipated cars of the year. When British billionaire Jim Radcliffe announced plans to produce a no-nonsense SUV inspired by the previous generation Land Rover Defender, many smelled a vanity project. One which was likely to follow the traditional British pattern for sportscars: small volumes, construction involving lots of hammers and a serious price tag to limit demand.

But that would have been a sensible, short-odds bet, and Radcliffe clearly doesn’t make those. Instead, he persuaded Daimler to let INEOS take control of a sizeable car plant in France, enrolled Magna Steyr in Austria to lead the engineering and arranged supply of six-cylinder petrol and diesel engines from BMW.

There have been some lucky breaks along the way – defeating Jaguar Land Rover’s legal attempts to argue the Grenadier was too close to the Defender, and taking over the Hambach factory just after Daimler had spent a nine-figure sum refitting it to produce the EQA and EQB – production of those has been switched to Hungary. 

But much of the official media tour of the shiny new Hambach factory was spent with journos arguing over how many Grenadiers the state of the art facility will need to produce each year to pay for itself.

INEOS has previously said 25,000 vehicles per year was the number, but doing the maths with planned cycle times and shift patterns suggests the plant can get far closer to 40,000 without breaking too much of a sweat.

For contrast, the old Defender only managed an annual 25,000 twice in its last 16 years of existence. Talk about a high stakes gamble – even if a contract to continue production of the Smart ForTwo EV for several years brings another revenue stream.

Seeing the Grenadier in its component form also proves that despite the semi-familiar design, it is a very different car from the model that inspired it. Like the classic Defender, it sits on a ladder chassis and has chunky solid axles hung at each end.

It also uses a mechanical transfer case with high and low ratios plus a locking centre differential. But it has also been designed to satisfy the modern safety standards the old Defender couldn’t get close to passing: there is a secondary structure within the square-topped front wings to give them adequate pedestrian crash test performance.

The other striking detail is how tightly packed the Grenadier’s engine bay looks with a BMW six-cylinder inside it. While the coil-sprung Defender was mostly offered with smaller four-cylinder powerplants, there were simpler five, six and eight-cylinder engines that took up less engine bay than this more modern engine.

Six-cylinder BMW power is something the Defender can claim originally, using a 2.8-litre 'M52' petrol engine in South Africa. These new 3.0-litre petrol and diesel motors in the Grenadier, however, do seem over-spec for something so utilitarian.

The drive is a very limited one but gives the chance to see how the Grenadier copes with gelatinous mud – in this case, the chance to scramble over the slag heap of a former coal mine in a place called Crehange.

It doesn’t take long to establish that this definitely isn’t one of the carefully constructed off-road courses that manufacturers often used to demonstrate the capabilities of their new SUVs without the risk of actually getting stuck.

I prove this point by getting stuck.

The basics are as we’ve listed them before. The Grenadier’s cabin feels reasonably spacious, and certainly much more so than the old Defender, not having the Land Rover’s uncomfortably offset driving position. The prototype’s cockpit was covered in warning labels and much of it didn’t function – the entire centre panel of buttons were disconnected, and it didn’t even have a working heater.

What I had presumed to be a digital instrument display in front of the steering wheel turns out to just be a console for warning lights, all information is conveyed by the touchscreen interface in the centre of the dashboard.

INEOS had brought both petrol and diesel-powered prototypes, and I ended up in a petrol one. It was soon clear that there wouldn’t be a chance to experience the 210kW engine in full flight, with the entire drive taking place in low range with the centre differential locked (the prototype didn’t have the optional front and rear electric lockers working.)

My peak speed during half an hour in the mud was an indicated 25km/h, and I never got the standard eight-speed automatic box into a gear ratio higher than third.

The prototype felt like a hard-beaten mule, with the transmission clunking and sometimes snatching and bigger accelerator openings sometimes causing the engine to bog down.

The basics are good: the accelerator pedal is weighted to give the gentle top-end responses well suited to off-road progress, and the engine has more than enough brawn for both steady progress through sapping mud and also charging bigger obstacles.

The prototype’s lack of working traction management meant I was on my own when it came to throttle discipline, meaning lots of slithering and wheel spin. I got the Grenadier bogged down and incapable of forward progress several times, but never so badly I couldn’t back it out and then have another turn. But while the finished car will have stability control it won’t come with the battery of active systems which are pretty much standard to lifestyle SUVs these days.

It was a point made by the difficulty I had in getting the Grenadier to turn on the slick surface, even with its front tyres well away from grabbing wheel tracks. It felt like I was fighting against a locked front differential, even though I wasn’t. It was only thinking about it later that I realised most of my off-roading in the last year has been done in various Land Rover products, all of which have featured the smart Terrain Response system that manages traction with fast-acting electronic differentials, and which can tighten lines and help cars turn through torque biasing.

Similarly, my first instinct whenever the Grenadier ran out of ground clearance was to reach down to check the air suspension was in its highest mode. Only it doesn’t have air suspension.

This probably says more about my pampered life than any failings for the Grenadier. It’s true to say that Australia’s response to the new car has been one of the keenest of any major market – commercial director Mark Tennant says our allocation has been increased on the basis of early demand. But buyers will be getting a very different vehicle to tech-filled cars like the new Land Rover Defender.

The Grenadier is one designed to be rugged and reliable, but also to require a degree of skill to get the best out of it. There really isn’t any risk of a potential Grenadier customer confusing it with the new Defender but – important proviso – I suspect that with a non-expert driver the Land Rover would actually get further into the wilderness. 

There seems no doubt the INEOS Grenadier can deal with off-road adventure, but it’s the wider business plan that still needs to prove itself. Is the world ready for a new car that is so deliberately old fashioned?