IT’S SWELTERING ON THE PAFURI LANDING STRIP.
In the distance, an African fish eagle calls while a kudu munches on a dry tuft of bush grass. Almost in biting distance, a bask of crocodiles lie in the late morning sun, menacingly half submerged. All is as it should be in the Kruger National Park until the buzz of a Cessna Grand Caravan closes in on the rough and rutted gravel strip. The plane touches down in a cloud of orange dust and rattles its way over to a line of shiny new Ineos Grenadiers. The engine cuts, the door flips down and a familiar looking, streaky 6’4” figure emerges. Familiar, that is, if you have even a passing interest in business, football, Formula One, sailing, cycling or cars. “Ah, you’ve brought the new Quartermaster with you, I see – I’ll have to drive it,” says Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
What brings Britain’s richest man – worth approx £29bn as of May 2023 – to the South African bush? Well, alongside presiding over the sprawling Ineos business empire he founded 25 years ago, Ratcliffe has an insatiable appetite for adventure. Together, we’ll be travelling from Pafuri in the Kruger National Park through Botswana to the Okavango delta. Included in the group is his son George, the commercial director of Ineos Automotive, as well as Lynn Calder, its CEO, and to cover that mammoth distance, we’ll be using Ratcliffe’s very own creation: the Ineos Grenadier.
From the moment the mournful news of the Defender’s demise trickled out of Solihull in 2015, Ratcliffe started hatching a plan to create a replacement. “I spent many, many years driving around Africa in Defenders and, I mean, they’re not reliable but they were a very comfortable vehicle and quite cool looking,” he reveals one evening at camp. Slouched in his chair sipping a non-alcoholic beer from the bottle, the businessman is imposing but informal. He’s the first to admit he’s not keen on interviews – which is surprising for a
man who catapulted himself further into the limelight by bidding on Manchester United. Still, he’s jovial, frank and self-deprecating at times.
For the 71-year-old petrochemicals tycoon, cars and motorbikes have fuelled his appetite for adventure. After touring 6,000 miles of southern Africa on motorbikes over 100 days in 2012, Ratcliffe recently drove across Mongolia and into China in a pair of blower Bentleys and the world’s oldest Land Rover Series I to celebrate his 70th birthday. He’s as much of a fan of the original Defender as he is the Mercedes G-Wagen – a car he also owns, alongside a host of classics ranging from Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari F310B, a McLaren F1 GTR, which ran at Le Mans in 1995 and a Ferrari 250 GT California Spider.
Ratcliffe’s business success has come from spotting what he believes are underloved companies – or in this case, cars – and developing them. Growing up in social housing on the fringes of Manchester, Ratcliffe studied at university before a spell at a number of petrochemical companies led him into an MBA and, ultimately, a career in private equity. From there, he took a punt on a deal to buy a business from BP in the New Forest and the rest is history. Ineos was formed in 1998 and has grown from a niche business no one had heard of to a commercial juggernaut. Now Ratcliffe’s company owns a third of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team, backs Ben Ainslie’s America’s Cup challenge and owns Sky’s former Tour de France cycling franchise as well as a portfolio of football clubs, soon to include his beloved Manchester United.
“I could see that there was a hole left in the marketplace after the Defender,” says Ratcliffe. “When it’s gone, what is the vehicle that looks
“RATCLIFFE RECENTLY DROVE ACROSS MONGOLIA AND INTO CHINA IN A PAIR OF BLOWER BENTLEYS”
great and is quite good off-road?” he asks. Just a few metres from where we’re sitting lies one answer – a fleet of modified Toyota Land Cruisers – the leggy, beaten and bruised type that have been customised to ferry tourists through the bush to see big game. Alongside the original Defender, Land Cruisers have long been the preferred choice for safaris, farmers, militaries and even the UN. Praised for their simplicity, offroad capability and penchant for survival when the going gets rough, the Cruiser’s remit has expanded since the original Defender clocked off. Now with a new, retro-styled model ready to hit the road, Ratcliffe’s Grenadier will continue to face stiff competition from Toyota – among others – for a slice of the rugged off-roader market.
Still, Ratcliffe is a businessman at heart and so doubled down on his investment to ensure the Grenadier has the best chance of survival – at least in this wilderness. Recently purchasing a firm that specialises in creating custom vehicles for the bush and beyond, the newly named Ineos Kavango now forms part of his motoring stable. With a prototype safari vehicle produced in 2022, the Grenadier is attempting to pick up where the old Defender left off in the bush but also in healthcare, farming, conservation and even the film industry. While selling to the rough and ready ‘trades’ sits well with the rugged brand image Ineos is keen to cultivate, most of its civilian customers are also following suit. Two thirds leave the factory with front and rear diff locks and an average of five accessories specced, while the smaller 17in steel wheels nudge ahead of the larger alloys as bestsellers, suggesting Grenadiers aren’t falling victim to the same pose-focused crowd as oh so many murdered-out Land Rovers. “Mine in Iceland has 37in wheels,” boasts Ratcliffe, offering up a picture of his mutant, snow-crushing Grenadier.
Despite his move to the warmer tax minimising climes of Monaco in 2020, it’s clear Ratcliffe is still irked by what he sees as the demise of Britain’s motoring icons. “If you look at Porsche and the 911, it’s one of the world’s most iconic brands and it’s evolved over time. The firm has always been very respectful – it has always recognised that the 911 has been its core DNA,” he insists. “In the UK, we had the E-type, which was just as iconic as the 911. They had the 911 and we abandoned the E-type and then I see them doing the same with the Defender.”
While Ratcliffe is particularly vocal about Britain’s mishandling of its motoring heritage, he’s not exactly proved to be the nation’s knight in shining armour. Track back to December 2020, when the world was rapidly descending into ‘unprecedented’ levels of COVID-induced chaos. Ineos delivered a blow to the UK economy by backtracking on its plans to build the Grenadier in Bridgend, Wales. Just one year before, Ratcliffe declared that the decision to build in the UK was an “expression of confidence in British manufacturing, which has always been at the heart of what Ineos stands for”. In the end, he opted to take over a former Mercedes factory in eastern France. “An opportunity too good to ignore,” he justified. So, what eventually emerged was a car designed to be a spiritual successor to a British icon, that is built on the FrenchGerman border with German running gear. Hmm.
“But it’s got German build quality,” he assures me. “As for the reliability, it’s German reliability and that comes from the BMW
“I THREATENED TO CAN THE PROJECT – I WASN’T GOING TO LAUNCH A CAR THAT LOOKS S**T”
engine and the ZF gearbox.” Since the delivery of the first Grenadier, Ratcliffe is keen to point out that of the 6,000 cars the company sold, he’s received 96 customer complaints. “That’s not bad for a new car company, is it?” he reasons. While it’s a little too early to assess the Grenadier’s longterm reliability, according to Ratcliffe, less than two per cent of Grenadier owners have grumbles so far – a number he’ll need to keep low if he’s to get anywhere close to rivalling reliability god Toyota.
In line with Ineos folklore, the boss confirms it was a conversation over gin and tonic in the Grenadier pub that encouraged a somewhat “naive” Ratcliffe to embark on a journey that was statistically destined to fail. In the past decade, we’ve witnessed countless automotive startups come and go. In six years, the Grenadier has made it to production, which is not to be sniffed at, but it’s not out of the woods just yet. Only a few years ago, James Dyson’s failed attempt at a Dyson electric car was briefly on Ratcliffe’s radar. “We had a look but we didn’t get excited about it, so we said no. It was as simple as that,” he says, frankly.
“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think I could make money out of it. I still do think we’ll be quite profitable in the automotive sector,” he says, raising his brow. Despite that, Ratcliffe estimates he’s spent £1.5bn on the project so far and counting. Asked if he’d do anything differently if he started again, the answer is simple. “We wouldn’t launch with 11 different colours,” he chuckles. For a chemicals giant, you’d assume colour mixing would be the least difficult part of building a car from scratch but no, “that was a stupid decision because we’re not from the automotive industry. We were very naive,” he admits.
But it wasn’t just colour that proved a challenge. “We made some stupid decisions – we learned a lot of lessons in design,” he recalls. “We discovered there are a lot of tensions between design and engineering. We’d design something and then someone would say you can’t do that because you’d break one of a million rules that seem to exist when building a car – be it pedestrian impact or whatever. So, we got a bit cleverer about how you deal with that interface.”
Despite his best efforts, the design difficulties Ratcliffe references have risen to the surface, with a general consensus that the Grenadier missed the mark on the looks front. While it’s not as handsome as either the G-Wagen or original Defender, he insists it’s an area he refused to compromise on. “During the development of the Grenadier, all the engineers said I couldn’t do this and that, so I threatened to can the whole project – I wasn’t going to launch a car that looks s**t. So, they all went off in a huff and came back with three different ways that I could have my own way!” Remember he mentioned getting clever about dealing with design and engineering? Yep, let’s just call it the Ratcliffe way.
Still, the Ineos boss is defensive about the Grenadier’s looks. “I quite like the idea that when you open the garage door it puts a smile on your face.” Looking to the near future, Ratcliffe assures design will be a big focus, particularly on the forthcoming EV – a car he promises will be an antidote to the scourge of “faceless jelly moulds”.
Despite occupying a special place in his heart, the Grenadier is chapter one for Ineos Automotive and Ratcliffe is confident about what’s to come. “[The EV] is really cool looking,” he insists. “It’s a smaller version of the Grenadier with a really good range and it’s going to look a bit different.” Ratcliffe promises the EV will still be a competent off-roader. “It will go up the Schöckl or I won’t let them produce it,” he commits. Despite his new electric car taking up the majority of the company’s time for now, Ratcliffe is already eyeing production sites in China and the USA. Other than that, there’s potentially one or two new cars left in the pipeline, which he remains tightlipped about. “We’d never do more than four models,” he insists.
For now, it’s fair to say the Ineos boss has quite a bit on his plate. Bidding for global sports clubs, a chemicals empire and now a rough and ready car company that’s attempting to take on the automotive establishment. “It’s quite a lot to get it all right,” he says, finishing off his non-alcoholic beer. Jumping back behind the wheel of his own creation the next morning, he blazes a trail off into the distance, leaving a cloud of dust behind. If there’s one thing to note about Jim Ratcliffe, it’s that he doesn’t hang about.