Ineos Cars
Truck · 2 models
Ineos Automotive: The Billionaire's Answer to the Old Defender
TruckIneos Automotive is a British maker of off-road vehicles based in London and owned by the chemicals conglomerate Ineos. Its founder, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, started it after the original Land Rover Defender went out of production, and its first vehicle, the Grenadier, went into production in October 2022.
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When the original Land Rover Defender ended production at Solihull in January 2016 after 67 years, Ratcliffe tried to buy the tooling to keep building it, and Jaguar Land Rover said no. So he started his own project, code-named Projekt Grenadier after his favorite pub, The Grenadier in London's Belgravia, where the idea first came up. Magna Steyr was brought in as engineering partner and BMW as the engine supplier.
The plan was to build the truck at a new plant in Bridgend, Wales, until Daimler offered Ineos its Smart car factory in Hambach, France. Ineos bought it in December 2020, and production of the Grenadier started there in 2022, with the first deliveries in December. A four-door pickup, the Grenadier Quartermaster, followed in July 2023. The project lost more than £250 million over its first three years, according to figures Ineos released in November 2021, and its North American headquarters is in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Ineos has also looked at other power sources. It partnered with the Hyundai Motor Group on a hydrogen fuel cell Grenadier in 2021, and in February 2024 it showed a prototype of a smaller electric or hybrid model called the Fusilier. Production of the Fusilier was planned for no earlier than 2027, but it was canceled in early July 2024. Lynn Calder has been chief executive since December 2022.