2024 Ineos Grenadier Review- A New, Old $80,000 SUV

This is the new Ineos Grenadier and it's a brand new off-road SUV for people who find the regular crop of SUVs to be a bit too soft. If you miss the old Land Rover Defender, the old Toyota Land Cruiser, old school boxy utilitarian SUVs with a purpose, then this is the truck for you. It costs $80,000 and today I'm going to review it and show you all of its quirks and features. Today's video is brought to you by Cars and Bids, my online enthusiast car auction site that recently sold this and this and this and this and this. All right, time for the quirks and features of the Ineos Grenadier, starting with, well, an explanation of what exactly is this thing. Let's start with Ineos. That's a name not too many people have heard, not exactly a household name, but it's a major company, one of the largest chemical companies on the planet, a multi-billion dollar company, Ineos. Now, the founder of Ineos is Jim Ratcliffe. He's a British billionaire who has nostalgia for the original old school Land Rover Defender. And I guess he thinks the new Defender is a little too soft, too luxury, too high tech. So he set about creating a brand new car that had the ethos of the original Defender, and that is the Grenadier. Now, despite the look of the Grenadier, this doesn't share any components with the old school Land Rover Defender. It just has a similar look and a similar purpose, to be an off-road focused basic SUV without all the luxury bits that so many modern ones have. As for the name, the Grenadier, apparently it is named after the pub in London where the idea of it was conceived, the Grenadier Pub, and hence the Ineos Grenadier, a very British story. And a few other basics. Here in the United States, the Ineos Grenadier has a starting price of around $73,000 or starts around $80,000 if you upgrade to one of the top versions, the Trialmaster or the Fieldmaster. The Fieldmaster is the luxury model. It has leather interior and various other luxury components, whereas the Trialmaster, that's this one, is the off-road model with all sorts of off-road upgrades and accessories that I will show you in this review. To be clear, it is not called the Trailmaster, which you might think, but the Trialmaster. It's named after a type of jacket that is also called the Trialmaster. Again, it is quite British. But despite the Britishness of the Grenadier, the production is not very British. For one, this is built in France at the factory where they used to make the Smart Car, not in the UK. And the powertrain is sourced from BMW. It's a three-liter straight-six, the B58 engine, that's used in a wide variety of modern BMWs, like the new 3 Series, the new 4 Series, the X3, and even the new Toyota Supra, which is sort of a BMW. Now, the big difference is tuning. In the Grenadier, this engine makes about 280 horsepower and about 330 pound-feet of torque, which are different figures than the BMW models that use this engine because it was tuned less for performance and more for pulling and hauling around the vehicle. Now, it's worth pointing out that in other markets, the Grenadier is also offered with a BMW diesel engine, but that's not coming to the States. Here in the US, we only get this gas-powered BMW six-cylinder mated to an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission and, of course, standard four-wheel drive. But next, we go onward to the quirks and features, starting with the key. It's a folding key like a lot of cars have, as you can see, and there's two obvious buttons, lock and unlock. There's also a third button, that's the Ineos logo. In a lot of cars, the manufacturer logo locks or unlocks or remote starts. Here, it's the alarm. Don't press it. Anyway, you walk up to the car after unlocking the doors and you can see the side of the doors have these panels on them. What exactly is that? It's for cargo hooks. You can stick hooks into these panels and then use it to keep gear tied down on the side of your truck. If all your gear is wet and you don't want to put it in the cargo area or you have too much stuff back there, you can hook it on the side with these panels that are ready for hooks, such as life with the off-road trial master. But anyway, next, we climb inside the Grenadier, and the first thing you notice when you get in here is the sheer volume of buttons and switches inside this interior. You can see here in the center control stack, just buttons and dials and switches everywhere, and they continue on to the ceiling. You have this massive panel of switches that goes from the mirror all the way back basically into the center of the ceiling above the front seats. For all those people who always say, I don't want screens in my car, I just want buttons, well, here's why you don't really want that. Modern cars have so many features that if you just did buttons, you would end up with what almost looks like an aircraft jet control panel in here, and you still have a touchscreen. Even with all these buttons, you still can't get away from it. More on the touchscreen in a second, but first, let's talk about what all of these buttons do. Starting in the center control stack, this whole area is the climate controls. It takes up a rather large spot because there are basically dedicated buttons and dials for everything. You can see a large button for the heated seats on both sides, for example, and the window defoggers, and the buttons to change where the airflow is coming, all of that stuff. They have their own pieces here, and the climate controls are big. Of course, in the center, you can see the hazard lights, which are flanked by two bars, I guess, so you don't accidentally press them. Now, below that, you get a button for the auto start stop feature and a button for the park assist system, and then in the center, you have this dial which adjusts the stereo. This is your only stereo adjustment dial in here. The rest is done through the infotainment screen, and again, I'll get back to that in a But first, let's move up to the ceiling, where you can see an absolutely huge amount of extra buttons, switches, and dials. So, the furthest back switches back here, these actually don't really have a function from the factory. These are auxiliary switches, and you can wire up auxiliary items to these switches. If, for example, you wanted to add other electronic items to the car that use power, like auxiliary lighting or tire inflators, anything you might want to do, you can wire it up to these extra switches in the ceiling. The switches up front have a lot more purpose. They mainly control off-road stuff. You can see your front and rear differential locks here. You also can go into off-road mode and waiting mode, and you have the button to turn on your downhill descent control and turn off your track control, but there's other stuff here, too. You can turn on your interior and exterior lights and your reading lights with this giant array of buttons and switches here. You also have a handy little diagram that reminds you exactly how wide and how tall your Grenadier is, just in case you're not sure if you're going to clear something. Well, here's the good cheat sheet. Next, we move into the center console here, and you can see, for one, the parking brake, an old-school lifted-up parking brake, not some electronic stuff. You also have the center armrest that, of course, lifts up for storage, and you have a couple of cup holders here, and you have this lever, which looks kind of curious and a little novel. That is your low-range gear. You want to put it into low-range four-wheel drive, that's the lever you use. Now, interestingly, mixed in with all these controls is your gear selector, which you can see here. This is a BMW gear selector borrowed straight from all of the BMW models. I have previously said it looks like a potato chip. I still feel that is true, and it is very much out of place in the Grenadier with all of its square and circular controls. This is almost too modern and new age, but it's a BMW powertrain and transmission, so the gear selector goes along with it. Now, the other thing you'll notice in here is a dial in the center and So, let's talk about the infotainment system, which is rather unusual, mostly because the left side of the infotainment screen shows what you would normally expect to see in a gauge cluster. In other words, your speed is printed there, your odometer reading, your current fuel level, it's all printed on the left side of the central infotainment screen, and that's because the does not have a traditional gauge cluster behind the steering wheel. Instead, it has this little panel, as you can see, which shows all of your warning lights. When you turn on the car, they all illuminate. There are a lot of warning lights, but you turn it on and you can see that's where that panel is located. So, the gauge cluster information is moved into the center screen. Now, the obvious reason that Ineos did this is to make the car a little bit cheaper for left-hand drive and right-hand drive conversions. Instead of having to make a separate dashboard gauge cluster for left-hand drive and right-hand drive, all that information is in the center so they can more easily swap the steering wheel position depending on which market they're producing the car for. It just makes production a little bit easier. Now, as for the infotainment system itself, well, it's not really all that great. For one thing, it's kind of far away because it's in the center and then it's positioned on the opposite side of the gauge cluster readout, so it's pretty far to reach. And frankly, it's kind of slow to respond to your input, so it doesn't really have all that many cutting-edge features. But that's not really the point of the Grenadier, so you can kind of forgive it for having a relatively average infotainment system. Also worth pointing out, it does have some cool features in its infotainment system, like the Pathfinder feature where you can record a path. So, if you're on some cool off-road trail that isn't marked on the map, you can record it here and then you can drive on it again later because you've already done it. You also have an off-road statistics component inside the menu where it'll show you, like, the previous altitudes you've climbed to, how far you've driven, all that stuff since you've been driving and since you've been driving off-road, which is kind of cool. But generally speaking, the infotainment system, again, fairly average. It contains audio, various vehicle settings, but it's not going to be your main focus in this interior. If you're the type of person who buys a Grenadier, the infotainment is definitely a secondary thought since you like the old-school basic SUV. Now, beyond all the controls I just showed you in the center of this interior, you also have a few buttons on the steering wheel that control other items, like your cruise control over on the left that's pretty standard, and on the right you have your stereo volume track adjustment. But you also have the coolest Grenadier control of all, which is a little horn that says toot with a bicycle on it. Listen to this. The Grenadier has a normal loud horn in the center of the steering wheel. You press it and it's loud. Or, if you just want to let someone know that you're approaching without angrily honking, you have the little toot, which is a secondary quieter horn. Take a listen. The reason it has a bicycle on it is, I guess, if you wanted to let a cyclist know that you're approaching and you don't want to honk at them and get everybody angry, you can just toot toot to let them know that you're coming up behind. That's a great feature that the Grenadier has. Now, beyond the steering wheel, directly behind them, in fact, you have your stalks for your turn signals and your wipers, which are borrowed from BMW. Interestingly, despite borrowing the powertrain, the Grenadier doesn't have that much BMW stuff. It has the gear selector, like I showed you, and the turn signal and the wiper stalks, and also the hood latch releases from BMW. You got to pull it twice to open the hood like in new BMWs, but aside from that, a lot of the stuff in this car is proprietary. Ineos created it and they didn't borrow it from other automakers, which is commendable. Usually, you get into a small volume product from a new brand and you can see a lot of shared stuff that they had to pay for. Not here. They went out and got stuff themselves. And beyond the controls up front, a couple other interesting quirks. For one, over on the passenger side, you have a grab handle integrated into the dashboard. It is very sturdy. It's there if you're doing severe off-road maneuvering to steady yourself so you don't go fly and hit your head or just grab it if you get scared. I also like the fact that in the center of this entire dashboard situation, you have a circular display that is not a clock. Instead, it's a compass that shows direction, and it also shows your current altitude and the outdoor temperature. This is a vehicle for adventuring, and those items are important when you're adventuring. And next up, we move on to the back seat, which is surprisingly roomy, actually. Old-school Defenders are tight in back. This is larger than an old-school Defender, and the interior makes that clear. You've got decent space, headroom, legroom. It's all pretty good. Unfortunately, the back seat has a few more drawbacks than I was hoping. For one, it's hard to climb inside the back seat. The Grenadier is high up off the ground, and so getting in is tough. And there's no grab handle mounted maybe on the inside of the B-pillar like some cars have to make it easy to pull yourself up. So that's a little disappointing. The other big disappointment back here is the lack of storage for rear seat passengers. You don't have nets on the back of the front seat for storage compartments like you do in most other cars, and you don't even really have cup holders back here because the center seat doesn't fold down as an armrest to make cup holders. You're kind of forced to make do with what you have in the door pocket, which isn't a shaped cup holder, so your drink might spill. For an off-road adventure vehicle, you'd want to see a little bit more storage back here. I also don't love how the door panel looks compared to the pillar next to it. You can see these two items were designed by totally different groups. The door panel looks nice with its stitching and its nice materials, and then it all just stops for that central pillar. A well-designed, well-executed interior has the door panel design continue to flow and not just stop because the door panel ends. Kind of nitpicking, but still a few things you notice that aren't exactly perfect back here. Now, with that said, a couple things I love back here, the large full-size climate vents, which is nice to see in the back, and directly below that you have power ports, USB-A, USB-C, and a household port, all of which makes adventuring a little bit more useful and convenient in the back of the Grenadier. And next up, we move on to the cargo area in the Grenadier. Now, accessing the cargo area is interesting because the tailgate is actually two individually opening doors instead of a traditional tailgate. Now, the reason that they do that is so they can mount a spare tire on the back. You can't easily put a spare tire on the back of an opening tailgate because it's too heavy, but you can mount it on a door, which is also why the new Defender and the Mercedes G-Wagon have opening doors instead of traditional tailgates. Now, one of the cool benefits of the Grenadier is this split tailgate, which means you have a small tailgate door that you can open separately from the main one. So if you just want to put small items inside, just open up the little door and you can stick them in without having to go to the trouble of opening the big, giant, heavy tailgate. But that also creates some drawbacks, the biggest of which is when you're driving along, you got a giant post in the center of your rear window. And you can see in the rear view mirror that post is very visible and certainly does cut down on your rear visibility. This car would benefit greatly from a rear view mirror camera, but it doesn't have one. The other interesting drawback is that the rear wiper only covers the large rear window. The small rear window cannot be wiped, which is another visibility disappointment. But worth pointing out that there are heating elements in both rear windows, left and right, which is nice to see. Anyway, climbing inside the back of the Grenadier, the first thing you realize immediately is that the cargo area is absolutely huge. I've been reviewing so many modern SUVs with their sloping roofs that come into the cargo area, not here. It is a giant space, square, rectangular, boxy, enough room for anything. And of course, the rear seats fold down if you want even more space, you can get a lot of gear in the Grenadier. There's a slogan for you. You also have on the storage floor, these hooks that I mentioned that you can also put on the outside in order to keep gear kind of tied down and make sure it doesn't slide around. You even have more hooks on the sides of the cargo area to mount even more cargo netting or to just keep gear safe so it doesn't slide around. Also worth pointing out, one other thing I really like about the cargo area of the Grenadier is this panel here on the inside of the tailgate door. You open it up and it's a little storage compartment. Now, for Grenadiers sold in Europe, this is where their mandated warning triangle has to go, but in the United States, the land of freedom, we have no such mandates. And so it's just an extra storage compartment where you can put smaller items to kind of keep them private and make sure they're not rolling around in the back. Pretty cool. And next up, we move on to the rest of the exterior quirks and features of the Grenadier, starting with lighting. Now, like most old school SUVs, it has giant circular headlights, but they're updated for modern standards. These are LED headlights with a little LED running light circle going around it that turns into an LED turn signal when you put on the turn signal. That makes sure that lighting is better than what you would have gotten in an old Land Rover Defender. Same deal around back, you have LED light circles for the taillights, the brake lights, and the turn signals in back. One interesting exterior item you can see over on the driver's side, the side mounted turn signal. This is a mandate in Europe. There must be a turn signal on the side. Over on the passenger side, the side mounted turn signal is mounted on the snorkel that helps the engine breathe when you're fording a river. They had to move it from the bodywork to the snorkel to comply with the regulations. And it's just kind of funny to see that that happened. Now, also on the outside of the Grenadier, the wheel and tire situation, you can see steel wheels. Not common on an $80,000 SUV, but very common on a purpose-built off-roader, and that's a neat thing to see. You also have BFGoodrich KO2 off-road tires, my favorite off-road tire that comes standard on the Trialmaster Grenadier. And one other interesting thing up front, you can see on the hood, you have these black plastic panels near the back. If you look closely, they say on them, powered by BMW. Ineos does not try to hide the BMW origins of its engine, and when you go under the hood, the plastic engine cover says basically the same thing. It came from BMW. And now you know. Next up, we move down the side of the Grenadier. You can see these bars mounted on the side. These, again, are for gear. You can mount roof racks to them. You can mount a roof box and keep it secure on these side bars. They're there for any purpose you might need them. And you can see plastic panels next to the side bars that have a little lightning bolt. That's there because these are prepped for electricity. If you want to have auxiliary lights on the side of your Grenadier, you can install them here very easily, just kind of plug and play and mount them, and then they're connected to the auxiliary switches in the ceiling so you can easily turn them on. You don't have to drill holes or do wiring. It's already all prepped for it, which is nice. Also interesting, along the side of the car on the passenger side, this is the fuel door. It's nicely integrated. You wouldn't necessarily know that it's there, although it is huge. You press to open and, well, there it is. It's probably so big because, like I mentioned, there's a diesel-powered Grenadier in other markets, and so the diesel model would require a second little fuel filler for the diesel fuel additive back there. But in the States, we just have our gas-powered one, so it looks unusually large. Next up, another interesting item on the outside, this Grenadier comes with a winch. It is an option. This one has it, and it's really cool. It's hidden behind the flip-up front license plate. The license plate is shown there, as you can see, but you can flip it up and out of the way and get access to your winch when you need it. A very cool hidden trick winch. That's a neat idea. And it's worth pointing out that the winch that comes with the Grenadier also comes with a remote control, so you can use it from the outside of the truck or sitting inside the truck. You don't have to be standing right there at the winch pressing buttons, which is a nice feature. Last couple of interesting items. For one, you can see the Grenadier's VIN right here. Interestingly, the VIN starts with the letter S, which is the country code for the UK, symbolizing production in the UK. But this isn't built there. It's built in France. The VIN should start with V, which is an odd little quirk for VIN geeks like myself. Now, speaking of stuff you see on the outside of this truck, there are a lot of badges all around this truck that tell you exactly what it is. You can see at the base of the windshield, a little plaque here that tells you the trim level, and of course, up front, the INEOS badge. Next, you move to the side where you have a little panel on the rear fender with the INEOS logo and a little panel on the front fender that says INEOS. In the back, you also have the INEOS logo, and then it says Grenadier on the tire cover. And then on the little door, the A in Grenadier has been called out for some reason, not sure why. And that also appears back there symbolizing what this is. Over on the driver's side of the front fender, you have Grenadier stamped into it for yet another brand logo situation. And on the mirrors, the rearview mirror housing, you can see once again, Grenadier. It's everywhere just to make sure from every angle you can tell what this is. Although you drive this thing around and none of that stuff will stop people from asking you what it is. As for a couple of other interesting specs, the Grenadier weighs about 5,900 pounds. It is quite heavy, and the result of its size and its shape is about 14 to 15 miles per gallon. It's not particularly efficient, even with just a six-cylinder under the hood. It's also about 194 inches in length, which makes it squarely in the sort of midsize to slightly large territory. But it certainly isn't as huge as its boxy, brawny looks might suggest. All right, driving the Ineos Grenadier Trialmaster, which might as well be Trailmaster because that's what everybody says, even though it's technically wrong. Not just technically wrong, actually wrong. Anyway, first thing getting in this car that I noticed that I love is the seating position. You sit up high, you're looking out over a square hood like an old school truck or SUV. I have a G-Wagon. I had an old Land Rover Defender before. I had an old Range Rover Classic. This kind of upright sit up here, look out over the square hood feeling, that's what I love from these vehicles. Yes, I'm going over the speed limit. Thank you. And I think it's so cool, and I love that this car has it. And these days, most modern SUVs really don't. We've kind of given that up in favor of stuff like pedestrian protection, things that actually matter. But nonetheless, it is really, really cool to still look out over a big old square hood like an old school SUV. The second thing I noticed when I started driving the Grenadier is that the steering is absolutely bizarre. The way it works is you turn the wheel, but unlike in every other car, it doesn't cancel. You let it go and it continues kind of going off into that direction. You actually have to actively steer it straight. So when you make a left turn, you don't just kind of let the wheel slide back between your fingers to straighten out the car. You have to actively, yes, I'm going over the speed limit again. You have to actively turn the wheel back into the straight position to get going straight again. Here I am turning, and the car keeps going, so I must turn it back. It is crazy. Now, I actually don't think it's that bad. I've driven a French car, a Citroën, that was like this as well. You just have to get used to it, but it's an absolutely weird design and situation. Okay, next up, the powertrain. Obviously driven this engine in a lot of BMWs and one Toyota. It's a great powertrain. I was worried that it would be overmatched by this car because this is a big hulking vehicle. It's heavy, but it isn't. This engine actually feels pretty good. The Grenadier is certainly not fast. It is not a performance vehicle by any stretch of the imagination, but it is totally acceptable to go around town and drive around, even on the freeway, accelerate up to speed, etc. It's not slow. This is actually important to mention because, you know, this car is sort of based on the idea of the original Land Rover Defender. That was slow. That was like not a particularly usable car in terms of accelerating up to the speed limit on the freeway and that kind of thing. This solves that problem. And another problem that it solves that the original Defender suffered from, it's surprisingly refined. You know, I saw this car just like looking at it and I'm thinking, okay, that's going to be rough and crashy and difficult and just like the Defender was, like it was something you had to put up with. That's not really the situation here. It's actually a lot better than I was expecting in terms of the ride quality. It is reasonably smooth. And then you add in a reasonably smooth powertrain and a reasonably smooth transmission. Yes, I know I'm going over the speed limit. Thank you. And it actually drives better than I was expecting. I was thinking that in order to get one of these, you are making a major concession compared to more traditional vehicles like a new Defender or whatever, but that's not really the case unless you're talking specifically about steering. Truthfully, I've read some reviews online about this car that were quite negative. I think that they're from people who have never really spent time in one of these trucky SUVs. And they're mostly, I hate to stereotype, but they were mostly younger people who I think weren't really around in the days of the old school SUV and maybe don't have any nostalgia for it. But I think if you did spend time with these older trucky SUVs, they have like an undeniable appeal to you, like a nostalgia appeal that they're just so cool. And this one actually does a pretty good job of being like that without being quite as compromised as an old Defender or an old 60 Series Land Cruiser or something of that variety. Admittedly, there are still compromises. This thing that keeps telling me I'm over the speed limit is tremendously annoying and apparently you have to turn it on and off each time you start the car. There's no self-driving or driver assist, like it doesn't have some of the features that you would expect from an expensive new SUV. It's going to appeal to a limited buyer base, like a G-Wagon or a new Defender is a better vehicle. It has better technology. It obviously has more of a dealership network support for reliability and servicing, that sort of thing. To the limited pool of buyers who are going to want an old school SUV but brought to the modern era, this does a better job of it than I was thinking that it would. And I'm actually pretty impressed driving it around. It does do a good job of bringing the old school into the new in kind of a better way than I figured that Ineos would be able to do. And so that's the Ineos Grenadier. This has gotten some criticism for its steering feel, its on-road manners, its entire driving experience. But as someone who owned an old school Land Rover Defender, I get it. This isn't for everyone. In fact, it's only for a small sliver of people. But if you think that today's off-road SUVs are a little bit too daycare drop-off line and not tough enough, then this is for you. And now it's time to give the Grenadier a Doug's score. And the Grenadier ends up here, 59 out of 100, which puts it in a fairly low position against rivals like the new Land Rover Defender, the new Lexus GX, the G-Wagon, the Rivian R1S, etc. Truthfully, I really liked the Grenadier a lot more than I expected, but it has a very small appeal. You really have to bypass all of the benefits of rival SUVs from highly regarded brands in order to give this startup SUV a try, even despite its low-tech approach and worse on-road manners. For people who long for the days of the old Defender and G-Wagon, this will have huge appeal. But how many of those people really want to spend over $80,000 on a new SUV? I guess Ineos will find out.