Ineos Grenadier
Truck · Ineos
Ineos Grenadier: A Modern Take on the Original Defender
The Ineos Grenadier is an off-road utility vehicle Ineos Automotive has built since October 2022, designed as a modern replacement for the original Land Rover Defender. It uses a steel ladder chassis, beam axles, and BMW inline-six engines.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, chairman of the chemicals company Ineos, wanted to keep the original Defender alive after it ended in 2016, and when Jaguar Land Rover wouldn't sell him the tooling, he built his own. The truck is named after his favorite pub, The Grenadier in Belgravia, London, where the idea came up. Design chief Toby Ecuyer said the team studied a long list of trucks to get there, including Jeeps, Land Rovers, the Toyota Hilux and Land Cruiser, the Nissan Patrol, the Ford Bronco, and Unimogs. It doesn't use any original Defender tooling or parts.
The Grenadier has boxy bodywork on a body-on-frame steel ladder chassis, with beam axles and long-travel coil springs front and rear. BMW supplies the engines: the B58 gasoline inline-six makes 282 hp and 332 lb-ft, and the B57 diesel inline-six makes 245 hp and 406 lb-ft. Both use a ZF eight-speed automatic with what Ineos calls a heavy-duty torque converter, and the truck is rated to tow 3,500 kg, or about 7,700 pounds. Ineos planned 1.1 million miles of testing during development and expects to build 25,000 a year at full capacity.
Ineos had planned a new factory in Bridgend, Wales, but in December 2020 it bought Daimler's Smart plant in Hambach, France, instead. Production started there in 2022, and the first customers got their trucks in December 2022. A four-door pickup version, the Grenadier Quartermaster, followed in July 2023.