Life with the Grenadier: I used no-nonsense 4x4 for everything, everyday

Ineos makes a thing of how rugged and dependable it would like the Ineos Grenadier to be, so this one arrived with 10,000 miles already on it. We’ll add as many as we can for the full ownership experience. I’m to be its custodian, for a couple of reasons. First is because I live in the sticks and keep some animals, so the other people here think I’m a yokel (do excuse me while I put the Nespresso pods out for recycling). Second is they think I’m a sucker for a big and brash car that is more 4x4 than SUV. And on that count they would be right. The Grenadier is a 4x4 rather than an SUV, if you want to make that distinction, and I think here it’s right to do so. Ours is in Fieldmaster trim, and like all Grenadiers it has a separate body and chassis, live front and rear axles and a low-ratio transfer case, plus here we have three manually lockable diffs. The engine is a BMW-sourced 3.0-litre turbo petrol with 282bhp at just 4750rpm and 332lb ft from 1750rpm through to 4000rpm. It drives via an eight-speed automatic. The powertrain is just one example of how Ineos looked beyond itself when it came to the Grenadier. Well-known automotive giant Magna Steyr was appointed as development partner, while the beam axles come from Carraro, experts in ‘off-highway’ drivelines. Basically it’s all super-rugged stuff. It is, then, more than capable of the things I’ll be asking of it in my daily life, which means I’ll be going literally and figuratively out of my way to challenge it in order to find out just what it’s made of and take it outside its comfort zone. I’ll be taking it outside its natural comfort zone, too, because it’s got to cut both ways: this is a £76,140 car before options, and if you’re going to spend that much it’s fair to hope it will have a broad spread of abilities. The hardware inevitably brings some compromises on the highway, of course. The same is true of most 4x4s that major on ruggedness, but it applies even more if, as here, it has been optioned for off-road use. The Rough Pack brings front and rear diff locks (to add to the standard centre one) and BF Goodrich KO2 tyres, which are among the best you can get. Ours also has a towbar, ‘utility belt’ (more on that another time), side runners, rubber mats and more. Standard is recirculating ball steering that’s slower and less keen to self-centre than a rack and pinion set-up, but it’s needed because the latter gives too much kickback on a live axle. The previous Land Rover Defender plus the Suzuki Jimny and the Jeep Wrangler all have it too. How compromised does this stuff make the Grenadier on the road? Some people say the Ineos is an acquired taste; I wouldn’t necessarily argue, but it’s one that I have quickly come to like. In a way, I feel the same about the Grenadier as I do about an Alpine A110 or Toyota GT86: they’re so focused on doing one thing that they’re compromised elsewhere. Some people wanted the GT86 to have more power. It could be done, but more power means more cooling, better brakes, beefier steering, perhaps bigger tyres and so on, which all adds size and weight. So no; to enjoy its purity, you had to accept it was a bit wheezy. If you want to appreciate all a Grenadier can do, then, you have to look beyond some of its shortcomings. The slow, advisory capacity steering is the big one: I’m frequently making little direction changes, but they come so subconsciously I relax into them, a bit like driving a canal boat. You can feel there’s a lot of unsprung mass, too, but the Grenadier isn’t uncomfortable. Far from it. It’s really well isolated, and while it can be bumped around by big undulations, it’s actually refined and quiet inside when driving on pockmarked asphalt. And what an interior. Every passenger so far has said how they think Ineos has tried to make it look like a flight deck. I haven’t used all of the buttons yet – some are for external lights or accessories I don’t have – but I really like the choices you can make in here. The air vents are controlled by a knob on the actual vents; I can turn the lights on and off; I can lower the headlight beam; and I can change the cabin temperature without looking away from the road. Making a point of saying these things would have been unimaginable 20 years ago, but I couldn’t do any of the above in the BMW i5 I’ve just stepped out of. I have a lot of goodwill for a car that, compromised or not, treats me like an adult. I have a feeling I’m going to warm to the Grenadier. Matt Prior 1 - 0 NCP The Ineos Grenadier has slotted into my daily life as easily as its flat sides and large mirrors help it slot into tighter parking spaces, as seen below in one of Gatwick airport’s short-term car parks. The Grenadier’s turning circle is large and it is quite a big car, so I was very pleased that with minimal shuffling I eased it gracefully into an end-of-row bay – my favourite kind – before going on my merry travels. I returned and took this picture because I was so happy about how little space I’d left between the car and the barrier, and drove home. Imagine my surprise when, a few days later, the good people at Ineos informed me that they’d been sent a parking penalty charge notice by NCP, this car park’s operator, and asked if I could please sort it out. Perplexed, I looked at NCP’s evidence. It turned out that if I’d walked around the left side of the car, crouched down and squinted, there were some more of the little yellow blobs seen in front of the car, which once, perhaps decades ago, were cross hatchings. Which means this wasn’t a valid parking space. That was news to me, because it looked a lot like one when I left it. And it would have been news to the private parking sector’s Single Code of Practice, too, which says that “signs and surface markings must be designed, applied and maintained in such a way as to be visible, legible and unambiguous to drivers”, which these were not. I appealed the penalty charge on those grounds, and NCP cancelled it as a quite annoying – by which I mean infuriating – “gesture of goodwill”, attaching a reminder that I should “take into account the displayed terms and conditions, to ensure you do not receive any further parking charge notices”. I’ll tell you what, NCP: rather than passively aggressively telling me to be careful, why don’t you play by your ownrules? It took a social media post before NCP acknowledged that, on review, I shouldn’t have received the charge in the first place. It also promised it would sort the space out; I will check on it next time I go to Gatwick. Towing tested I’ve been trying to not just use the Grenadier for the daily grind: I’ve so used it to tow an Audi A2 home from Shropshire, a task at which it was particularly adept. A non-folding towbar is fitted (£630), which works well, although it’s mounted quite high, gives the car a rough and ready look that I like very much, and gives me something to stand on when reaching deep into the boot. And here’s a great thing about that split tailgate: you can have a trailer hooked up, with the jockey wheel handle pointing forwards, yet still open the boot doors fully for easy access. And one side door being smaller than the other leaves room to walk around it: you’re never squished between door and trailer. This is the kind of sensible, thoughtful design touch I can fully get behind – the sort that makes me overlook a Grenadier’s foibles. There are some, and I will come to them, but it eases them away. The French connection To north-east France and the Grenadier factory to see the opening of a biomass plant (saves money, greener than gas, smells like Christmas trees) and more importantly interview Lynn Calder, Ineos Automotive’s CEO (hear us wherever you get your podcasts). I could have taken several trains or flown, but it is a way away from big cities. Colleagues reported taking more than two and a half hours to transfer across from Frankfurt airport. And where’s the fun in any of that? It’s only five hours from Calais, lending it ripe for a road trip, and I love road trips. Via the Eurotunnel, Hambach is about 10 hours door to door from my gaff. Weekdays in mid-March are seemingly quiet for LeShuttle, so when I arrived early for my outbound train, they put me on an earlier one, and when I was late on the way back, they put me on the next one. If it’s busy, this might not be so straightforward, but mostly it’s a doddle. Coming home, I went from check-in to carriage in less than 20 minutes. Long motorway journeys are not, you may understand, the Grenadier’s forte, but I enjoy them. I find these broad seats really comfy, and while there was some consternation in early Grenadier commentary about footwell intrusion caused by the routing of the exhaust, the angled footrest has never bothered me Limiting my motorway speeds to the low 60s, I scored 21.3mpg to Hambach and back. I think you would have to wipe off another few MPH or slipstream some trucks to do much better. That’s the nature of a 3.0-litre petrol six in a car like this. Across bad cambers and big undulations, one is aware there’s a lot of unsprung mass trying to unsettle the Grenadier’s body, but it’s generally absorbent. Given its large size and bluff shape, I’m impressed with how little wind noise there is and how refined it feels. After a morning and a bit of factory tours and meetings and a schlep back, I arrived at home around midnight. Next morning, I wasn’t unhappy to be back in the car for a commute. 17.8mpg... Our photographer Jack Harrison has taken my Grenadier to Wales to do some green-laning. “Useful to have some rough road library pictures of it,” he said. Which sounded like an excuse to have a go, really, but I could just about bear to oblige. A few minutes in, he felt he was regretting it, what with the heavy ride and slow steering, but he came around. You have to feel your way into a Grenadier, its charms being so mechanical and old-school. Sure enough, he came to like it (almost) as much as I do. And now we have some of the best pictures we’ve yet taken of a Grenadier, which I dare say we will still be using decades down the line. We keep thorough fuel records of our long-termers, of course. I don’t know if Jack was in more of a hurry than me or whether it was all that clambering up green lanes, but I’ve just logged his fuel consumption at 17.8mpg, whereas I tend to get nearly the same amount the other side of 20mpg. This is what comes, I think, of driving this BMW straight-six petrol-powered Grenadier at around the motorway speed limit. Knock back the cruising speed by 10mph and it makes a big difference. So much so that even when I was towing a trailer to Shropshire, and back with an Audi A2 tied to it, I still returned 20.0mpg. Maybe that demonstrates how light and slippery the A2 is… Jack was perhaps a victim of the over-cautious fuel gauge, which advises you to refuel when there’s still about a third of a tank left. He blinked and could fit only 66 litres in its 90-litre tank. Take it to the last gauge marker and it will accept 85 litres. I haven’t driven the diesel Grenadier (which also uses a BMW straight six), but this ‘B58’ unit is a lovely thing, and versatile: it’s also in the Morgan Supersport (where incidentally it will exceed 40mpg). But if anything it sounds nicer here, being so well insulated that you don’t hear mechanical injector tapping but get a brappy rasp on the fuller throttle openings of the kind, for reasons listed above, that I try not to make too often. Verdict The Grenadier has returned to its maker, and I’m quite sad about it. It arrived in January with around 10,000 miles and has gone back three months later with almost 18,500 miles to its name, so it has been used thoroughly and extensively in that time. It was a 3.0-litre petrol (there’s a 3.0 diesel too, both BMW engines) in Fieldmaster specification, kind of the more country lifestyle-oriented variant of three Station Wagon flavours – the other two being a base model and the ruggedly optioned Trialmaster, which is the same price as this, at £76,140 at the time of arrival and £78,885 now. This model was given some of the technical options of the Trialmaster in order to hone its off-road performance, such as a Rough Pack, which means locking front and rear differentials (a centre one is standard) and BF Goodrich tyres. Our first taste of this particular car was off road, in January’s 4x4 mega-test, where it held its own against a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Land Rover Defender. But it was noted that it was not the world’s most re ned road car: getting it to stay with us for a while to see what it was like as a long-term road-going prospect was one reason we wanted it on our fleet. It’s a slightly divisive car. A couple of testers tried it and didn’t really gel with it; others drove it and rather fell for it. As did I. As a reminder, the idea for the Grenadier came from Ineos founder Jim Ratcliffe’s disappointment that Land Rover wasn’t going to replace the old Defender with a car in the same vein: something utilitarian first and foremost. It’s a market that Land Rover felt had left it behind: if you want a separate-chassis utility 4x4, Toyota sells around half a million Hiluxes a year and they start at £42k. So Land Rover went for premium instead. For all the ruggedness of the Grenadier, Ineos has also begun to add some of that market to its ambitions. On the utility front, on a recent trip to the factory they had on display some examples bought by fire departments and France’s rapid-response anti-terror police; there is also the Quartermaster pick-up, along with the commercial variants. A portal axle option, raising the ride height further, has just become available. Ineos’s Arcane Works division, which does more bespoke finishes, and a ‘1924’ special edition have been added to the portfolio, too. This is starting to become a lifestyle vehicle – as much as a working one – because people value authenticity. They perhaps value it more than traditional luxury; I imagine a Grenadier can only feel so luxurious. But I found it refined enough, with the caveats made before about the enormous turning circle and heavy, unkeen-to-self-centre steering. Get used to those and it’s easy to rub along with. We should – must – talk drawbacks. It’s hard to get a full grasp of ownership when a car arrives for three months and departs having needed no servicing and no contact with the network, and when nothing needs rectifying. So I’m grateful to some owners who’ve written, and who’ve pointed me at owners’ forums. There were a few niggles with our car that seem common. The door handle buttons could be sticky in winter (regular use, or warmer weather, sorts them out). Some owners find issues with the ventilation: this car preferred to blow very warm or very cold, but wasn’t brilliantly responsive in between (fortunately, with a low fan speed those are my two preferred states for HVAC anyway). Some owners don’t like the footwell intrusion on right-hand-drive cars. There are “annoyances, not catastrophes”, as some put it, like it’s v1.0 of a car that could do with being at least v1.1. But what also seems to be true is that big things don’t go wrong. Of more concern to many owners – and this isn’t a UK-specific issue – is a shortage of dealers and repairers, which is a difficult situation for a new, still low-volume car maker: too many outlets and they won’t each look after enough cars to make money. Too few and customers will decide it’s too far. To some, aftersales feels stretched. Ineos recently entered its 50th global market, but that expansion is slowing so it can consolidate its existing positions. Part of that clearly needs to be a broadening of the network. Then again, let’s not pretend that other, bigger car makers always get that right. Being a petrol model, it drank fuel at an immoderate rate of 21.7mpg, but apart from that, and a £25 tyre repair for which it can’t be blamed, it didn’t incur any costs or need looking at. Depreciation seems to be par for the big 4x4 course. Should you buy one? I’ve had emails from owners advising it both ways. But the messages tend to say: “I love the car…” So did I. And whether you’re trying to sell to business users or enthusiasts, that seems like the right place to start. Ineos Grenadier 3.0T Fieldmaster specification Prices: List price new £76,140 List price now £78,885 Price as tested £88,917 Options: Winch £3515, Rough Pack (diff locks, BF Goodrich tyres) £2370, 18in alloy wheels £1690, high load auxiliary switch panel £1170, metallic paint £1060, side runners £958, tow ball £630, privacy glass £455, exterior utility belt £420, lockable storage box £290, interior utility rails £160, tie-down rings £59 Fuel consumption and range: Claimed economy 18.9-19.6mpg Fuel tank 90 litres Test average 21.7mpg Test best 22.1mpg Test worst 17.8mpg Real-world range 430 miles Tech highlights: 0-62mph 8.6sec Top speed 99mph Engine 6cyls in line, 2998cc, turbocharged, petrol Max power 285bhp at 4750rpm Max torque 332lb ft at 1750-4000rpm Transmission 8-spd automatic, 4WD Boot capacity 1152-2035 litres Wheels 8.5Jx18in, alloy Tyres 255/70 R18, BF Goodrich All-Terrain K02 Kerb weight 2741kg Service and running costs: Contract hire rate £676pcm (commercial variant £599 pcm) CO2 336g/km Service costs None Other costs None Fuel costs £2143 Running costs inc fuel £2168 Cost per mile 28 pence Faults Sticky door button, hot and cold HVAC

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Life with the Grenadier: I used no-nonsense 4x4 for everything, everyday

It's at its best off-road - but can this Defender-aping, do-it-all SUV make mincemeat of the daily grind?

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Life with the Grenadier: I used no-nonsense 4x4 for everything, everyday

It's at its best off-road - but can this Defender-aping, do-it-all SUV make mincemeat of the daily grind?

More from Autocar

Top 10s

Latest car reviews

Top manufacturers

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About Autocar