Motoring Alan Judd

A HALF-BRITISH GRENADIER

Short-term treats are one of the answers to life.

In the long term, we’re all dead – so it’s wise not to look too far ahead. That’s why I’m focused on the Grenadier in 2021.

The Grenadier is a pub in Belgravia, named after a soldier beaten to death for cheating at cards. However, it’s not the pub that’s the apple of my eye but the result of a conversation that took place in it in December 2017. That was when Sir Jim Ratcliffe, head of chemical conglomerate Ineos, hatched the idea to build a new version of the Land Rover Defender.

Land Rover stopped making the old Defender in 2016 and were working on its current, not-at-all-similar successor. The company wouldn’t sell Ratcliffe the Defender designs and tooling – so he formed Ineos Automotive, giving it a billion euros to produce his own modern version. It’s called the Grenadier.

At first sight, it looks like the old Defender: high and upright with clamshell bonnet, flat or nearly-flat wings, windows and panels, minimal overhangs and vertical grill. But, in fact, it’s a ground-up recreation, similar in size to the Mercedes G Class, though slightly narrower and powered by six-cylinder BMW petrol and diesel engines (with future hybrid, electric and hydrogen versions on the cards).

It’s mostly engineered at Magna Steyr in Graz, Austria, where they make the G Class, with the chassis made in Portugal and final assembly at Bridgend, where it will create 500 jobs. The commercial director is Mark Tennant, a successful ex-land Rover marketeer.

Ratcliffe appointed his friend and yacht designer Toby Ecuyer to design it. He produced the hose-out interior (like the original Range Rover’s), body shoulders for storage in the lower doors, more storage in the rear pillar and wet storage in the rear wing, as well as a load-bearing roof with built-in bars and no need for a rack. There are also utility rails for hanging lights etc.

Echoing the old Defender, it’s a bodyon-frame chassis with coil suspension and aluminium bonnet, doors and mudguards. The gearbox is an eightspeed ZF automatic, while the engines offer from 261bhp to just under 400bhp.

It has five doors (a four-door pick-up will follow), weighs 2,400kg, tows 3.5 tonnes, has a 1-tonne payload and has undergone a million miles of testing. It won’t come cheap – prices, depending on spec, are likely to be £40,000-£50,000 plus VAT, about the same as a new Defender. Ineos reckon they have to sell 25,000 a year to make a profit, which is slightly more than the old Defender was selling in its final years.

Ecuyer prioritised off-road performance, seeking a vehicle that was ‘assured, robust, faithful, dependable and purposeful’. He benchmarked vehicles that had proved themselves in the field and, crucially, ‘found their way into people’s hearts’. Those words encapsulate the old Defender’s DNA which, judging by appearance, is lacking in Land Rover’s successor version. Today’s Land Rover products, from Range Rover downwards, look like replications of each other, variations on the same theme.

Of course I’m biased, being addicted to old Defenders. I’ve owned about a dozen, the latest and newest being my current 2001 TD5. If I’d kept them all, I’d be a richer man. But that’s the nature of short-term treats; they come and they go, which is why you have to keep them coming.

The Grenadier is due out by the end of 2021. You could do worse than put a deposit down now.