RE: Ineos shows off Grenadier interior
Wednesday 7th July 2021
Ineos shows off Grenadier interior
A year after the exterior, we finally get to see inside...
They say good things take time. Maturing wine. Brownies cooling when you get them out the oven so you don't burn your mouth. Perfectly brewed coffee. But this trend seems to be making its way into the car-production sphere, with the world's slowest car reveals continue to promise great things. The new Land Rover Defender, for example, seemed to belong in modern folklore for years until JLR officially unveiled it in 2019. Even the Lego model was announced before most people saw the car in the metal.
The Ineos Grenadier, though, seems to be embracing that ethos to the limit, first unveiling the exterior in summer 2020 and now, a whole year later, we get to see inside. Luckily, for a change, the interior pictures released by the manufacturer actually provide us with something decent to look at - you're not peering inside another German SUV, that's for sure.
Let's start with the obvious: it doesn't look much like a new Defender on the inside. In fact, it doesn't look like any new car currently on the market. Predictably the firm has opted to hark back to the rugged and "built on purpose" (whatever that means) idea of 4x4s of old. And the Ineos sailing boat, apparently. The centre panel looks as though it might have been extracted from the Apollo 13 mission.
The first thing you'll notice from the pics are a good array of toggle switches, handy for operating with muddy gloves. Tick to the Grenadier. A bank of switches on the roof seem, whether hugely practical or necessary, pretty cool - although there are so many we're not sure how easy it would be to engage your auxiliary winch in the middle of the night, when it's raining, and you're covered in mud. Apparently the idea is that the passenger will be able to 'co-pilot' the car by having easy access to those buttons too, but any passenger of ours tends to be asleep five minutes into the M25, so who knows how much help they will be.
Of greater concern is the 12.3-inch touchscreen. Ineos insists it can be fully operated with the rotary dial, but why give us a delicate little screen - or tiny steering wheel buttons or no analogue dials - in the first place? Surely the whole point of the Grenadier was to provide an interior that could accommodate a deer carcass or a cement mixer or a salvaged outboard motor - and all the dust and oil and guts that come with them. Ineos has apparently delivered on the stain-resistant, rugged plastic to permit that - but the Grenadier would have been bolder and better without any screens to negotiate.
There's also a big red button on the steering wheel that has a picture of a bicycle and the word 'toot'. Your guess is as good as ours, but we're hoping they've gone for the Musk approach and added fart noises on demand. And we're not quite sure how well 'Toot' is going to translate for the Germans. We'll gloss over the plastic gearshifter nabbed from the BMW parts bin, too.
Counter intuitive or not though, you do get other well thought out, off-road perks like a footwell with plugs so you can "hose out" the interior and water-resistant seats. A dry storage box under the rear seat, lockable centre console box and secure side-mounted boxes in the back help with the adventurer prospect. Nevertheless, going on appearances alone, we're not so sure the humble Suzuki Jimny LCV doesn't earn itself bragging rights on the zero-frills utility front.
Discussion
I own a 1987 110 V8 and a 2005 D3. And I like this interior very much. It seems to strike a good balance between basic utilitarianism and just enough "adventure chic" to persuade private owners to buy a few.
I shall certainly be taking a closer look when it gets to actual launch time.
I shall certainly be taking a closer look when it gets to actual launch time.
A.J.M said:
Not very well laid out. Surely the controls should be easy to find and use without having to look up and faff about to find them.
Newarch said:
As to touchscreens, has anyone driven a tractor or large excavator in the last ten or twenty years, they almost all have touchscreens and they are distinctly utilitarian.
Tractors have the luxury of being "fire and forget" devices - set stuff up and then get going. Many car drivers, it seems, appear to operate in a world in which they have the luxury of being able to take their eyes off the road for long enough to navigate a menu structure.The use case is important here. For me, muscle memory is the key driver of how usable a cockpit is. I live in the countryside amidst very twisty narrow roads, and sometimes drive in London. In both places, hunting around on a touchscreen is (for me) an ergonomic disaster. I want physical switches in fixed positions, which I can then find by touch if needs be. I also want something to brace my fingers against if the vehicle is moving around - again, touch screens are a disaster as far as I'm concerned.
Compared to this, the new Defender is terrible from a functional perspective. It is why I have a D3 and not something later - everything is easily to hand, easy to use from muscle memory, easy to operate without taking eyes from the road.
For this reason, an overhead console also works fine for me - muscle memory, not hunt-and-peck, is how one operates those switches. But then I'm also a big fan of the Bristol Fighter interior, so obviously mine is a niche view given the sales figures of that mighty beast
bigbadbikercats said:
Which, as I recall is exactly what Ineos said they weren’t going to do with the Grenadier. It was going to be a genuine, rock solid lug the sheep to market, trailer the mini digger across the site, get the survey team up the mountain, and carry the prospectors kit into the desert utility vehicle, just like Land Rover didn’t make any more with the demise of the original Defender. On the basis of those interior shots this is not that vehicle
Not quite sure I follow your logic. The guts of this thing are a separate chassis, coil springs, 3 locking diffs, proper heavy-duty axles from a proper axle company, a better departure angle than an old Defender 110, and what look to be some very well-thought-through interior features. What aspects of the interior specifically scream compromise compared to, say, a later OS 110?LargeRed said:
jeremy996 said:
Video , TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO long.and TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many ad breaks,
Video seemed just right length-wise to actually understand the vehicle!longblackcoat said:
Max_Torque said:
Truckosaurus said:
40k+vat does seem suspiciously cheap as a base Land Cruiser (Prado) Commercial is 37+vat and a base 4dr Hilux is 31k+vat and both of those have huge economies of scale advantages and really are billy basic inside (and none of the fancy axles and diffs the Ineos is meant to be having).
I'm going to suggest that at a yearly volume of 10k units, they'll lose 12 to 15k on each one at that price........I don’t see them making much on a base model, but that’s not the same as losing lots.
DonkeyApple said:
skwdenyer said:
he factory is almost free (the Smart contract will keep paying for the factory for a while). We don’t know what terms they have with suppliers. The whole thing looks quite easy to assemble.
I don’t see them making much on a base model, but that’s not the same as losing lots.
They'll know where to price these to generate the required revenue. I would guess the cheapest model will be one that's non EU compliant and be initially jobbed out to Ineos employees as well as used by Ineos and also jobbed out to the employees of other industrial multinationals they work with. I don’t see them making much on a base model, but that’s not the same as losing lots.
Others will be sold to NGOs and charities while the one that's sold in the UK will be a lifestyle product and probably priced a fair bit higher.
Max_Torque said:
Leithen said:
Personally, I say good luck Jim, and I wish there were more like you.
But this is exactly the point! There aren't more people doing niche no-real-market cars because you can't even break even doing this.
If there were a nice easy buisness case to build this car:
1) JLR would still be selling the classic Defender
2) Someone else would have already done it
Re (2), the same can be said of almost anything. On that basis, none of the new manufacturers in the last 30 years would ever have started. There’s been saturation in the vehicle market for decades, yet still there is space for newcomers who get their market proposition right.
Andeh1 said:
skwdenyer said:
I disagree with (1) - JLR have negative brand value in this market in much of the world. A newcomer starts with a clean slate.
Re (2), the same can be said of almost anything. On that basis, none of the new manufacturers in the last 30 years would ever have started. There’s been saturation in the vehicle market for decades, yet still there is space for newcomers who get their market proposition right.
.... When people are so wrong you don't even know where to begin!! Re (2), the same can be said of almost anything. On that basis, none of the new manufacturers in the last 30 years would ever have started. There’s been saturation in the vehicle market for decades, yet still there is space for newcomers who get their market proposition right.
As far as LR's market position, the volume of videos like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcluW6rw4rw&ab... are a serious reminder to us that LR have a mountain to climb to be taken seriously by people whose lives depend on them working. There's one well-known YouTube channel that's on their 3rd new Defender after the 1st two were lemons.
Anyhow, neither you nor I have skin in this game. We can revisit this thread in years to come.
DonkeyApple said:
I don't think so. I think it's more to do with a lot of people unable to see clearly how it's going to attract 30k buyers a year.
It's really just another expensive toy unless they can genuinely make them very cheaply.
In the early days the vitriol emanated from those who saw this as some kind of Brexit champion but they've all evaporated now it's German and not likely to be sold for £20k.
I don't see that it was ever going to be £20k. According to JR, he wanted to buy the old Defender tooling and keep on producing it. In today's money, without any upgrades (or indeed return on capital to buy the tooling & set up a factory), that would cost almost as much as the Grenadier is suggested to be - inflation hasn't just stopped in the mean time. By any measure this will be a much more capable vehicle than the old Defender, but it isn't obviously being sold at a price far far in excess of the old one.It's really just another expensive toy unless they can genuinely make them very cheaply.
In the early days the vitriol emanated from those who saw this as some kind of Brexit champion but they've all evaporated now it's German and not likely to be sold for £20k.
LR sold 17-20k of the old one per year not so long ago, despite the poor reputation for reliability in much of the world. Of course nostalgia played a part there, but a target of 35k per year doesn't - to me, at least - seem completely unattainable.
DonkeyApple said:
It is difficult to work out what job it does that can't be done by something that already exists and is cheaper?
A LC70 Station Wagon is in the same ballpark price-wise as the Grenadier in key markets like Australia, South Africa, UAE, etc. The LC70 has an interior no more durable than the Grenadier's - recent updates have made it pretty civilised, with a large infotainment display. It has no diff locks. It is not going to be emissions-compliant for much of the world. Whilst there have been many upgrades, an LC70 is still based on a nearly 40 year old platform.Is it your contention that nobody can dare have a go at the LC70 market?
Many new (or reborn) brands have appeared over the last 20 years - each has found a space in the market, despite the market being pretty mature. Why do you believe this brand, specifically, cannot?
So we're clear, I'm not saying this will be a success; I'm just very curious why this specific brand seems to generate so many people determined to disprove its viability before it is even in production.
CS Garth said:
What Land Rover did was deliver a car they knew they had to make - and a cracking car it is too. They realised that, whilst they had to listen to the One Life Live It community, that community largely doesn’t buy new cars. Ergo you listen but attach the appropriate amount of weight to their comments.
My sense is that "that community" don't buy new cars *in the UK*. The USA is different - many buy brand new Jeeps, Defenders, etc. and modify them (or buy them optioned) to be "trail rated."That "One Life Live It" community are also valuable in setting the tone and, to an extent, underpinning residuals. So they are important not to ignore lest te brand suffer (if not today, if not tomorrow, them someday soon, etc...).
I don't yet know if LR have pulled that off quite - the faux chequer plate is a bit of a step too far for me (how hard would it have been to make the whole thing just a *little* less "lifestyley"?), whilst the central seat stuff seems to rather miss the point for me and the 90 step-floor just looks like a mess. The vehicle is very capable, certainly, but also missing a certain something. The fact the 110's boot is so small isn't great, etiher, and the downrate in payload (a 110 Hard Top will carry 800kg, vs the previous generation's >1000kg) seems a strange choice to make.
I'm waiting for the proposed 130 to see if that delivers a more usable replacement for the 110 of old. And I'm keen to see and try a Grenadier.
NomduJour said:
Not keen on that either. I’d have preferred a tumble-fold like the old Defender, Metro etc (albeit that it limits load length).
My Disco 3 has one of the better solutions, but not necessarily one easily compatible with a ladder frame chassis.
Newarch said:
If this comes out and isn't simply a competitor to the new Defender and the Mercedes G Wagen I will be astounded. I can't see it as a modern evolution of the old Defender because of the price and the user base. Interestingly when we hire a off roader from SHB we are still given a five-eight year old Defender 110, nice to see they are still in circulation.
Interesting that SHB don’t offer you an Isuzu or Toyota - apparently (according to some on this thread) only those required in some way to buy Defenders for work actually did so NomduJour said:
Howitzer said:
I really liked the new Defender and also the decent engine options so we could get a petrol. Sadly though after seeing them out and about around Bridgnorth it’s simply too big. It’s a pain at times the width of the ML but the Defender takes it to another level. Also the width seems to barely be different from the mirrors to the body. Seeing people struggling to park them also puts me off.
You’ll be disappointed to find out that the Grenadier is just as wide as a new Defender, then.New Defender: 1996
Grenadier: 1930
W164 ML: 1911
So it is true the Grenadier is rather closer to the ML than to the Defender.
NomduJour said:
Howitzer said:
So why didn’t JLR develop the defender ?
Because it wasn’t capable of being developed - the writing was on the wall back when the Series III arrived instead of an all-new design. Of course the Defender could have been developed. Just applying post-Victorian manufacturing thinking to it it would have yielded endless incremental benefits. Over time it would have - at the least - become something of what the Grenadier is.
The problem was that by the time this was culturally possible, the market had been lost. All those years of ignoring reliability. For years - decades - the LR was a cash cow.
Howitzer said:
NomduJour said:
Yes. How are you going to make an old Defender comply with modern safety legislation, for a start?
All been done to death on here.
I think you read my reply wrong. I said all the Defenders failings could have been dealt with over the 30 years it was being made and Land Rover did the absolute bare minimum. They could have been in the utility market till the last vehicle sold but they had already left through not developing their product. All been done to death on here.
They want what they have now which is fine and I think width aside, the new Defender is great. To say it couldn’t be done is not true though because if they wanted to they would have made something similar to the Grenadier.
As before, I hope it does well as I really like the vehicle but only sales will say for sure.
Dave!
The product did not evolve. It was frozen in time. The transition from Series III to 90/110 was, in effect, the least they could do. But even if they'd started there and moved on, they could have made great strides for very little cost (the tooling costs of individual changes on that platform are not large).
NomduJour said:
You’d have to start over, its actual method of construction prevents it from ever being capable of meeting modern standards. An all-new welded body would need a different chassis, which would need to be engineered for crash safety etc - there’d be nothing left.
Look at the SD5, Project Challenger/Defender 2, LCV2/3 etc (and the supposed Bronco/Defender platform share from the Ford days).
The point being made is that *incremental* change could have got you there.Look at the SD5, Project Challenger/Defender 2, LCV2/3 etc (and the supposed Bronco/Defender platform share from the Ford days).
Instead (and this was a very common BL problem), various "clean sheet" projects were proposed and then dismissed.
Compare against, say, the Toyota LC70 - on the surface, that's a 40 year old design, but has been continually updated.
Anyhow, all moot now.
Howitzer said:
If it’s anything like the Hiluxes that I’ve driven all around Africa, it will have some ride quality, some performance and also not rattle like mad. These are vehicles used on mine sites and on African roads.
What they did have was absolute reliability and whatever the outside temp you always stayed cool. I used to have to tow the Hilux we had, a 2000 model 2.6 turbo diesel, off the beach with the P38 RR we also had on lots of occasions as they had a habit of getting stuck, a lot. I’d never even entertain the idea of using the RR for long drives to satellite sites though as it had its fair share of breakdowns and poor design. This is what Ineos needs to be sure of. If not then the Hilux will still be the vehicle of choice.
Dave!
Agreed about the Hilux on sand - I once had to rather rapidly dig one out of the Mersey foreshore as the tide approached...What they did have was absolute reliability and whatever the outside temp you always stayed cool. I used to have to tow the Hilux we had, a 2000 model 2.6 turbo diesel, off the beach with the P38 RR we also had on lots of occasions as they had a habit of getting stuck, a lot. I’d never even entertain the idea of using the RR for long drives to satellite sites though as it had its fair share of breakdowns and poor design. This is what Ineos needs to be sure of. If not then the Hilux will still be the vehicle of choice.
Dave!
Chris944_S2 said:
The new G class is still an extremely good off roader.
For sure, the vast majority of them are used for the image rather than its abilities. But they still are great off roaders despite having been reengineered to be more car-like on the road.
Over here in CH you still find many being used in the Alps for what they were meant to do. My local electric board runs a few as they need something that is able to go to remote areas in tough terrain. Of course, the densest population of G-classes will be in Zurich town center, and if you want to find AMG or even Brabus versions you should go look there rather than up a mountain, but the base car is very capable and unlike LR products has always been reliable.
Worth bearing in mind that the previous G (chassis 461) is still in production and sold anywere Euro 5 is OK. The Australian military has just bought a lot of them. Sales have *increased* over the last few years as other rivals dropped out - a fact probably not missed by the Grenadier product planners.For sure, the vast majority of them are used for the image rather than its abilities. But they still are great off roaders despite having been reengineered to be more car-like on the road.
Over here in CH you still find many being used in the Alps for what they were meant to do. My local electric board runs a few as they need something that is able to go to remote areas in tough terrain. Of course, the densest population of G-classes will be in Zurich town center, and if you want to find AMG or even Brabus versions you should go look there rather than up a mountain, but the base car is very capable and unlike LR products has always been reliable.
CS Garth said:
Which will cost you £42k for a 3 year old one with 37,000 miles.
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202107175...
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