Britain gets back on the road!
After showrooms shut and sales slump, some good news: two brilliant new British cars from brand new marques
AFTER a year to forget for the British car industry, with the shutting of showrooms and factories causing carmaking and sales to slump, 2021 looks set to be a stand-out as two new British cars go into production from two brand-new British marques.
Both were revealed this summer and both take direct inspiration from an iconic, world-beating British car of the past. But they couldn’t be more different.
The Ineos Grenadier is the brainchild of billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, founder of the British Ineos chemicals group. It’s a simple, rugged off-roader which aims to capture the spirit of the original Land Rover Defender, which ceased production in 2016 and has now been replaced by a more refined, expensive new model. Named after the Knightsbridge pub where Ratcliffe first hatched the plan, the Grenadier is aimed at the farmers, aid agencies and adventurers who loved the old Defender, and is set to cost from £40,000 when production starts late next year.
The Grenadier is making its public debut this weekend at the prestigious Hampton Court Concours of Elegance car show.
Ratcliffe’s Ineos cycling team, formerly Team Sky, has been renamed the Ineos Grenadiers for the Tour de France which ends in Paris on September 20.
The new T.50 hypercar from Gordon Murray Automotive is the polar opposite of the Grenadier. It has been created by the legendary Formula 1 designer as an update of his McLaren F1 road car of 1992, seen by many enthusiasts as the greatest sports car ever made.
Just 100 examples of the lightweight, V12-powered machine will be made at the Dunsfold aerodrome in Surrey where Top Gear is filmed, at a cost of around £2.8 million each, and Murray says he has plans to build more cars under his own name in the future.
So can these two new British carmakers establish themselves alongside the likes of Land Rover and McLaren? Here’s what you need to know about each.
Ineos Grenadier
The car: The Grenadier is much closer in concept to the original Land Rover Defender than the new, more refined Range Roverbased Defender which has just gone on sale.
The Grenadier will feature an old-fashioned, incredibly tough separate chassis and a hard-wearing ‘hose-out’ interior, both aimed at those who’ll put their off-roader to work. The six-cylinder petrol and diesel engines will be supplied by BMW, and an eight-speed automatic gearbox will be standard.
It will be available first as a fivedoor station wagon and as a fourdoor pick-up.
The inspiration: The original Land Rover Defender was tough enough to transport the British armed forces over nine decades, and was loved by many for its simplicity and its unstoppable off-road ability. Emissions and safety legislation killed it off in 2016. Sir Jim was a fan, and his new car is intended to fill the gap in the market created when the new Defender moved upmarket.
Who’s behind it? Sir Jim Ratcliffe founded the Ineos petrochemical giant 22 years ago and is Britain’s fifth richest person with a net worth of around £14billion. He tried to buy the tooling to the old Defender to keep it in production, but Land Rover refused to sell so he set up his own carmaker to produce something in the same spirit. Ratcliffe is proBrexit and initially planned to assemble the Grenadier at a new plant in South Wales, saying that it would come with a ‘Made in Britain’ stamp. But although his carmaker will remain headquartered in the UK, he is in negotiation with Mercedes to buy the Smart factory in France.
When can I buy one? Production is due to start at the end of next year, after an exhaustive millionmile test programme for the prototypes. Ineos reports that over 17,000 customers have already put their name down, and with production likely to begin at around 25,000 cars each year, there may be a long waiting list by the time deliveries start. Ineos won’t sell the Grenadier through traditional dealerships. You’ll order one online, but test drives will be available. You can register your interest on the Ineos website now.
Gordon Murray Automotive T.50
The car: Almost all new hypercars feature hybrid or all-electric power, but Gordon Murray has chosen a pleasingly simple, nonturbocharged V12 and a manual gearbox for his latest creation. The 3.9-litre, 700-horsepower engine is unique to the T.50 and will be built by former F1 enginemaker Cosworth. The car’s exterior is small, simple and pretty, rejecting the trend for ever-larger and more aggressive high-end sports cars, and the cabin has the same distinctive ‘arrowhead’ layout as the McLaren F1, placing the driver in the centre of the car. Murray won’t reveal its acceleration or top speed, saying his entire focus has been on producing something that’s enjoyable to drive.
The inspiration: Launched in 1992, Murray’s McLaren F1 was the world’s fastest production car at the time, and quickly hailed as one of the greatest of all time. Only 106 were made, including racing versions which won the Le Mans 24-hour race. Owners have included Elon Musk, Jay Leno and Rowan Atkinson, who famously crashed his. The F1 cost £540,000 new but its rarity mean the best examples now sell for around £20 million. That makes the £2.8million price tag of the T.50 seem like a bargain.
Who’s behind it? South Africanborn Professor Gordon Murray is one of the world’s most prolific and successful car designers. He first came to prominence working with Bernie Ecclestone at the Brabham F1 team in the 1970s, where he created a radical (and soon banned) design that sucked itself to the road with a fan: the T.50 uses the same idea. He then joined McLaren, and helped the team win 15 out of 16 races in the 1988 season. He later created the McLaren F1 before branching out to design everything from more hypercars to a low-cost, flat-pack truck for African markets.
When can I buy one? Unfortunately, you probably can’t. Only 100 road cars will be made, and they’ve already sold out. Just 25 even more extreme racing versions will be made at £3.7million each, and half of those have already been sold too.
Many buyers already own a McLaren F1. Some previously owned one and can no longer afford to buy one back as values have spiralled, and so have ordered a T.50 instead. Murray reports that a significant number of buyers are under 45 and wanted an F1 as teenagers, and also that most buyers plan to use their T.50 on the road, despite the car’s extreme rarity and value.