Ineos Grenadier review

The Station Wagon starts at (we hope you're sitting down) £62,495. If you think that’s steep, it was £76k not that long ago. Clearly Ineos has read the room, because it overshot the equivalent new Defender which will be a much better SUV for most of the buying public. Either way, that’s worrying for Ineos's bottom line. Especially as nearly new cars are appearing on the secondhand market for around £50,000 – that’s a lot of depreciation to deal with in a matter of months.

More than that we struggle to see where conquest sales are going to come from. Once Ineos has sold one to everyone who had an old Defender and fancied a good upgrade, where are buyers coming from? It’s too expensive to be a farm truck, two agricultural for the Chelsea set.

As far as options go the Smooth Pack bundles together convenience features; the Rough Pack adds the front and rear diff locks and the full-fat BF Goodrich tyres. Go for the Fieldmaster edition – named after the Belstaff jacket, another Ineos company – and you get the ‘lifestyle’ iteration, with the Smooth Pack fitted.

The Trialmaster is the extreme off-roader, and includes the raised air intake, exterior utility belt and access ladder, as well as the Rough Pack. A straightforward vehicle this may be, but the marketing department has still been busy.

The Quartermaster pickup costs the same as the Station Wagon, with a 305mm longer wheelbase and a load bed that will take a Euro Pallet or a payload of up to 835kg (760kg for the diesel).

A Grenadier Commercial gets aluminium panels, blacked-out glazing and has had its second row of seats stripped away so that it qualifies as VAT deductible – that one’s £51,930 if you’re a business buying it as a workhorse.

Finally there’s the Black Edition – a replacement for the limited edition 1924 and something Ineos calls the ‘urban’ Grenadier. Yup, that means a black grille, tinted windows, gloss black 18s, a lockable spare wheel storage box, black interior… you get the picture. You can have it as a Station Wagon or Quartermaster for £71,995.

Ineos has identified four types of potential Grenadier owners: utilitarians, lifestylists, enthusiasts and corporates. In the midst of this, they’ve identified farmers and land estate managers, search and rescue services, and aid and health agencies, along with sailors, climbers, and skiers. You get the drift…

As with the car, the retail network is no-nonsense, with 24 sites in the UK the first among 200 in more than 50 countries. Some are part of established dealer groups, others are 4x4 specialists and agricultural equipment dealers. Yep, you might order a Grenadier at the same time as shelling out for a new tractor or combine harvester. You’ll be less bothered about the complimentary macchiato.

Ineos also offers ‘Flying Spanner’ technicians if the service network needs help, and any parts that aren’t on the shelf will be dispatched from a parts hub by express courier. The car comes with a five-year, unlimited mileage warranty, and the chassis has a 12-year anti-perforation warranty. You can imagine that engineering a brand new car from scratch might result in a few teething problems, but the Grenadier has been designed to be reliable and easy to fix. People who buy cars like this imperil their livelihoods if their workhorses are lame.