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[Alan Drover]

Austria = Steyr Puch?

[diffwhine]

Its now called Magna Styer and they are pretty much global now. It is absolutely a UK designed vehicle under Toby Ecuyer. Engineering has been done all over the place including UK, France, Germany and of course Graz in Austria. Magna also did some work in Turin - I met them while there in October 2020 on the Giro support. Amazing and dedicated people.

[Richard]

There's an article on the Grenadier in De Auto, club glossy of the KNAC (2023-2), a sort of posh ANWB, the Dutch RAC I guess. I can't seem to find it online and there's no mention of a website in the colophon. It's in Dutch, so I'm not taking photographs and will confine myself to some highlights.

Erik Kouwenhoven, the author, a freelance car journalist, starts of with an impression, a 3-day stay in Northern England and Scotland. "On the positive side, we had only one downpoor, on the negative, it lasted three days. Short, ideal circumstances for testing an all terrain vehicle." He describes it as a mishmash of Defender, Discovery, BMW and G-Wagen. It's followed by the success story of multi-everything Jimmy Ratcliffe, who "invented" the Grenadier to increase the brand awareness of his chemical company Ineos. He named it after his favorite pub, which he subsequently bought. Of course he would. He has already spent up to 1,5 billion on the Real Defender: on law suits by Land Rover over the strong resemblance, BMW engines, SMART factory in France… But he is supposed to spend some 4 billion in total for being able to propose 3 models. Then the usual technical positves: built like it was granite hewn, comfortable enough chassis for long drives, hardly any body roll, diesel and petrol engines with more than sufficient power and traction, fighter jet-like interior, with all those buttons and clocks front, top and bottom, knobs, both the turning and flicking variety, suited for use with gloves on, front and rear axle blockable independent of central diff, roomy, hosing-out-resistant interior. This is not meant to be an exhaustive enumeration. Short, "the Defender Land Rover should have built right from the start." But there are negatives too, steering being the second biggest problem: vague, especially in the sort of driving straight ahead position, with a gigantuous turning circle, not suited for the lifestyle type clientage it will undoubtedly also have. Biggest mother of all problems numero uno of course being its price of a wallet-busting 160.000 euro… (Not that the New Defender, or the Old one, for that matter, were a steal.)

(Kouwenhoven must have missed the entry-level Utility Wagon at € 68.650 (inlcuding VAT!) at Hedin Automotive: https://www.hedinautomotive.nl/ineos/modellen/grenadier.

Richard

[diffwhine]

Hi Richard,
Interesting article.
To counter some of the comments... Steering - yes - was not great, but now greatly improved. Its aimed fair and square as a workhorse, so if people chose to buy it as a shopping trolley or a Chelsea tractor, more fool them in my view. Its not a vehicle for all.

The steering is electric hydraulic working on a traditional chassis mounted steering box. By that I mean it has a standalone electric pump running the hydraulic pressure for the power steering. Some early vehicles had some issues with pressure settings on that which made them interesting at speed to put it mildly. Off road it was even more challenging! That is now sorted on series production vehicles, but as we all know, a steering box is much tougher than a rack system, but will never be as positive as independent suspension and a rack.

Costs - I'd challenge that Euro 160,000. I can get a Defender up to that sort of area if I take first editions and add every option possible, but a top of the range Grenadier tops out at around half that figure, so I'm not sure where those values came from. I've just priced up a Fieldmaster edition and even when adding every bolt on I can think of, I'm not able to get past about £84,000. I could go a bit higher with accessories I suppose. A standard Station Wagon comes in at just over £58,000 here. Expensive I know, but not for what it is in my view.

Yes - I am biased - I have been working with the Grenadier for the past 4 years, but in that time, I've done well over 20,000km and much of that in extreme off road. I love it!

[diffwhine]

And I still like my Land Rovers too!
If I didn't, I would not currently own 4 of them...

[Richard]

Hi Diffwhine,

Thanks. I suspected you might have your say on the matter ;-) The article doesn't mention the date of the test drive, so could be they tested an earlier model.

As for the prices, those are the prices over here, increased by what is known as BPM, Tax on passenger cars and motorcycles (and VAT of course), based on CO2-emissions in gr/km. According to a calculation model on the site of the Dutch fisc on BPM, for an Ineos Grenadier with petrol engine (364 gr/km), the BPM amounts to, you better sit down, € 109.714… https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/nl/bpm/content/personenauto-bpm-tarief-berekenen#huidig-tarief-personenauto-2 (the first table on that page, the second one is for hybrids). Take the emission 364, subtract the figure in column 1, multiply with column 4, add column 3.

Richard

Costs - I'd challenge that Euro 160,000. I can get a Defender up to that sort of area if I take first editions and add every option possible, but a top of the range Grenadier tops out at around half that figure, so I'm not sure where those values came from. I've just priced up a Fieldmaster edition and even when adding every bolt on I can think of, I'm not able to get past about £84,000. I could go a bit higher with accessories I suppose. A standard Station Wagon comes in at just over £58,000 here. Expensive I know, but not for what it is in my view.

[Richard]

^^^ taking that into account, I don't understand the 68 something thousand euro for the Utility Wagon. That must be an error…
Richard

[Richard]

O, right, the 68 thousand something is for a Utility Wagon with "grey" registration (called "grey" because the papers used to be grey in colour). The plates are not grey, just plain yellow with black lettering. The grey registration, a Dutch peculiarity I think, is for commercial vehicles. An exemple: you take your normal yellow registration Discovery, rip out the back seats, weld in a partition behind the front seats, pay a visit to the RDW (DVLA), and lo and behold you have a grey registration Discovery. Admittedly, I oversimplified a bit. Grey registration vehicles are, here's the crux, BPM exempt and you pay 25% of yellow registration road tax!
Richard

[Mycroft]

Spotted my first one in the wilds of Oxfordshire this morning. Looked rather tasty in green.

[strang]

I have seen quite a few on the roads around North Yorkshire on my travels - you definitely have to look twice to realise what they are. I saw one close up at a dealership in Skipton a while ago, and to be honest, it looked quite impressive. Obviously new 'Parking Rules' apply.....

[RobS]

I've seen two today at the Staffordshire County Show, a 2 seater and a 4 seater, prices started around £50K for the 2 seater and around £58 for a 4 seater. Outside it looked very good a bit on the bulky side but acceptable. Inside was not so nice the centre consul was like a box sitting next to you and the switches in the roof made it look like an aircraft cockpit, not sure if they were all functional but looked over the top.

I've not driven one but I'm on the Grenadier FB page and there are reports of issues with the steering, not sure what exactly it is, maybe Mark (Diffwhine) can give us an idea.

Would I buy one I'm not sure.

RobS

[LN11AAB498A]

..... there are reports of issues with the steering, not sure what exactly it is ....

I`ve heard the steering is very slow e.g. lots of turns lock to lock

[diffwhine]

Well...
I've just driven one 150 miles today (a combination of motorway, country roads and the delightful A303) and still love it!

The cockpit design is deliberate and works well. Basically all the big switches in the roof o the rear of the console are power distribution control. This is for anything like winch power control, exterior roof lighting, light bars, beacons and so on. Forward of that you have DSC off (as all modern vehicles seem to have), Hill descent control, axle diff locks and so on. There's also a wading button which turns off parking sensors, cooling fans and so on.

The steering is light and takes a bit of getting used to. People have got very used to a positive feel from EPAS and modern steering racks. This is a steering box, so less positive perhaps. But - hey - we are all used to driving Land Rovers!

What is funny is when people in Defenders wave at you and then realise that its not a Defender. They fly past pretending to ignore you!

This vehicle is off to South Africa tomorrow and an overlander is driving it all the way back.

[JReid]

Looks good and I would love to have a go in one. Will wait for a while and see what comes up on the second market.. I hate depreciation on new vehicles and also see what , if any faults show up if any.

[genocache]

I checked the build page, $71,500 base price for us Yanks;  https://ineosgrenadier.com/en/us/the-vehicle/vehicle-configurator

Mark(diffwhine)   Put in a good word for me if they need a test driver over here for me!      Hey, don't laugh, my blog has gone over 90,000 page views!