Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the INEOS chemicals billionaire and Manchester United shareholder who topped The Sunday Times’ Rich List last year, really loves Land Rovers. So much so, he owns the very first Land Rover ever built and, in 2016, when Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) ended production of its iconic classic Defender after 67 years, he offered to buy the production line. JLR turned him down.
So, in a £1.5 billion middle-finger gesture, Sir Jim decided to create his very own ‘son of Defender’ – something far more utilitarian and in-keeping with Land Rover’s original mud-plugging philosophy than the Chelsea tractors bearing the new 2020+ Defender’s badge.
The idea was first sketched on the back of a beer mat at a pretty Belgravia pub named The Grenadier. And here is the result: the £80,000 INEOS Grenadier, which Sir Jim’s lieutenants invited me to Scotland for a couple of days’ tearing across the Cairngorms to test out.
Things started, as they often do, at a luxury hotel: the much-talked-about Fife Arms in Braemar. The ambience and art collection are quite something; a collision of Victorian coaching inn and Mayfair supper club, with swirling ceiling murals, neon chandeliers, Picassos and Freuds, and – in the lobby opposite the ghillie station – a paint-splattered, self-playing Steinway piano. It began tinkling Everybody Wants to Rule the World, and a long grey-haired gentleman on the chaise longue bolted upright. ‘I wrote that!’ he exclaimed. I Googled, and sure enough he was one half of Tears for Fears.
There’s a bit of rockstar in the Grenadier, too. This is an idiosyncratic vehicle that revels in its flaws. On the road, for example, you’ll be sawing at the wheel when turning at intersections because the steering doesn’t self-centre (it uses a ponderous recirculating ball set-up rather than the normal rack-and-pinion steering because it’s more robust and shock-proof over the rough stuff).
The slab-sided styling is littered with clamps, racks, and crossbars to which you can attach everything from a tent to a barbeque. The dash and transmission tunnels have more buttons than a mixing desk – completely at odds with other 4x4s that are commanded via touchscreens. But the Grenadier revels in its chunky analogue physicality; there’s even a control panel overhead on the interior roof, Boeing-style. I feel like I’m driving a tank. I love it!
As a road car, it’s awful. The handling is wayward, and it does a much worse job of disguising its blubbery heft than the new Defender. However, embrace your inner explorer and take it off road to see it spring, scramble, and shimmy into action.
Royal Deeside’s 25,000-acre Glen Tanar Estate gives me the chance to grip the Grenadier on muddy hillsides and traverse rivers. Unlocking the differential and switching the transmission to low range allows it to scramble over, under, around, and through every obstacle. Its five-link coil suspension is mighty, enabling nine degrees of front axle articulation and 12 degrees at the rear. It’s as flexible as an octopus.
A regular sat-nav would be no help here. The Grenadier is fitted with Pathfinder – a waypoint-based navigation tool used when you’re off the beaten track. You can either upload GPX files (the computer format for geographic information) to take you on a pre-planned route or use the system to map your own like a pioneering cartographer. A digital compass points you in the direction of the next waypoint, but beware: it goes as the crow flies. Careful you don’t barrel your way over a cliff or into a tree; it requires an attentive look-out.
The programme I’m on is also made available to INEOS customers, and involves navigation exercises, some of which require alternative transport. My passenger and I had to race across a loch in kayaks to snatch hidden USB keys loaded with GPX files for the next off-road mission. We also indulged in rustic pursuits, such as the decimation of the local clay pigeon population.
The Grenadier makes no sense if 99.9% of your time behind the wheel is spent going to Waitrose, picking the kids up from school, or whizzing along motorways. But if you yearn to spend holidays off-grid, unbound by metalled roads and signposts; if you dream of waking up in a tent attached to your roof rack, the smell of fried bacon wafting across the moors at breakfast, and the whiff of cordite having taken care of dinner… well, it’ll take you to places no motorhome ever could, and much more comfortably than a classic Defender.
For all it owes the original Defender, J70 Toyota Land Cruiser, and Mercedes G-Wagon in terms of styling, the Grenadier has its own unique character. It’s one of the few high-riding cars you can buy today that has charisma, melding a slick BMW powertrain and state-of-the-art off-road technology with a ruggedly eccentric vehicle that’s been brought up on Sunday matinee war movies. And as an accessory for country living? It is every bit as on-point as the Wellington boot and wax jacket.
