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

This is the new inos Grenadier and it is a new off-road SUV for people who find the usual crop of SUVs too soft if you miss out on the old Land Rover Defender, the old Toyota Land Cruiser, the old school boxy utility SUVs with a purpose, then this is the truck for you, it costs $80,000 and today I will

review

it and show you all its quirks and features. Today's video is brought to you by cars and bids on 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 inos Grenadier, starting with an explanation of what exactly is this let's start with inos that's a name not many people have heard it's not exactly a household name but it's a major company one of the largest chemical companies on the planet a multi-billion dollar doll company inos now the founder from inos is Jim Ratcliffe is a British billionaire who is nostalgic for the original old school Land Rover Defender and I guess he thinks about the new Defender It's too bland and too luxurious for high tech so he set out to create a new car that had the spirit of the original Defender and that is the Grenadier.

Now, despite the Grenadier's appearance, it doesn't share any components with the old-school Land. Rover Defender simply has a similar appearance and a similar purpose of being a basic SUV focused on off-roading without all the luxury details that so many modern ones have. As for the name, the Grenadier is apparently named after the London pub where the idea came about. From there the Grenadier Pub was conceived and from there the inos Grenadier, a very British story and some other basics here in the United States. The inos Grenadier starts at around $73,000 or starts around $80,000 if you upgrade to one of the higher trims.

Trial Master or Field Master, the Field Master is the luxury model, it has leather interior and several other luxury components, while the Trial Master, which is this, is the off-road model with all kinds of upgrades and off-road accessories that give them I'll show. To be clear in this

review

, it is not called Trail Master as you might think, but Trial Master. It is named after a type of jacket that is also called The Trial Master. Again, it is quite British, but despite the Britishness of the Grenadier, the production is Not very British, for example it is made in France in the factory where they used to make the Smart car, not in the UK and the powertrain comes from BMW.

It is a 3 liter inline 6 cylinder b58 engine 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 a kind of BMW, now the big difference is the tuning in the Grenadier, this engine generates around 280 horsepower and ​​around 330 lb-ft of torque, which are different figures than BMW models that use this engine because it was tuned less for performance and more for pulling and lifting around the vehicle. Now it's worth noting that in other markets the Grenadier is also offered with a BMW diesel engine, but that won't be coming to the United States.

In the US we only have this gasoline BMW 6cy with a ZF 8-speed automatic transmission and of course standard all-wheel drive, but next we move on to the quirks and features, starting with the key, it's a folding key like many. of cars have, as you can see, and there are two obvious buttons to lock and unlock, there is also a third button which is the inos logo on many cars, the manufacturer's logo locks or unlocks or starts remotely here is the alarm, don't push it anyway. Get in the car after unlocking the doors and you can see that the side of the doors has these panels.

What exactly? It is for cargo hooks. You can attach hooks to these panels and then use them to keep gear tied to the side. 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 hook-ready like life with the power off. -road Trial Master anyway, next we go up inside the Grenadier and the first thing you notice when you walk in here is the sheer volume of buttons and switches within this interior.

You can see here on the center control console just buttons and dials and switches everywhere and they continue up to the roof, you have this huge switch panel that goes from the mirror to basically the center of the roof, above the front seats, for all those people who always say, "I don't want screens in my car, I just do." buttons, well this is why you don't really want modern cars to have so many features that if you just made buttons you would end up with an airplane control panel and you still have a touch screen even with all of these. buttons, you still can't get away from them on the touchscreen in a second, but first let's talk about what all these buttons do starting in the central control stack.

This entire area is the climate controls. It occupies a fairly large SP place. Because there are basically dedicated buttons and dials for everything, you can see a big button for the heated seats on both sides, for example, and the window defrosters and buttons for changing where the airflow comes from. All of that, 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 underneath you have a button for the auto start stop function and a button for the parking assist system and then in the center you have this dial that adjusts the stereo.

This is your only stereo adjustment dial here. The rest is done through the infotainment screen and again I'll come back to that in a second, but first. Let's go to the roof, where you can see an absolutely huge number of additional buttons, switches and dials, so the switches further back here don't actually have a factory function, they are auxiliary switches and you can connect them auxiliary. elements to these switches, if for example you want to add other electronic elements to the car that use power, such as auxiliary lighting or tire inflators, whatever you want to do, you can connect it to these additional switches on the roof, the switches on the front have a Much more purposefully, they mostly control off-road stuff.

You can see the front and rear differential locks here. You can also enter off-road mode and standby mode and have the button to activate the downhill descent control and deactivate the traction control. But there are other things here too: you can turn on the interior and exterior lights and the reading lights with this giant set of buttons and switches. Here's also a handy little diagram to remind you exactly how wide and tall your Grenadier is, just in case. You're not sure if you're going to clear something up, here's the good cheat sheet. Next we move on to the center console here and you can see, for example, the parking brake, an old school raised parking brake, not some electronic stuff that you have as well. the center armrest which of course lifts up for storage and you've got a couple of cup holders here and you've got this lever that looks a little curious and a little novel, which is your low range gear that you want to put into all four low range wheels driving. , that's the lever you use now, interestingly mixed in with all of these controls is your gear selector, which you can see here.

This is a BMW gear selector taken directly from all the latest BMW models. I said before that it looks like a potato boat. I still feel that is true and it is very out of place on the Grenadier with all its square and circular controls, this is almost too modern and new age, but it is a BMW powertrain and transmission, so the gear selector The other thing accompanies him now. You'll notice that there's a dial in the center here and several buttons that help you control the infotainment system, so let's talk about the infotainment system, which is quite unusual, mainly because the left side of the infotainment screen shows what you would normally expect see. in a gauge cluster, in other words, your speed is printed there, your odometer reads your current fuel level, it's all printed on the left side of the central infotainment screen and that's because the Grenadier doesn't have a traditional gauge cluster behind the steering wheel. this little panel as you can see shows all the warning lights when you start the car they all light up it's a lot of warning lights but when you turn them on you can see that's where that panel is so the indicator group information.

On to the center display now, the obvious reason Inos did this is to make the car a bit cheaper for left and right hand drive conversions rather than having to make a separate dash gauge cluster for left and right hand drive. and driving, all that information is in the center so they can more easily change the position of the steering wheel depending on the market in which they are producing the car. This makes production a little easier now, as for the infotainment system itself, well, it's not really everything. That's cool, on the one hand it's a little far away because it's in the center and then it's located on the opposite side of the gauge cluster readout so it's pretty far to reach and frankly it's a little slow to respond to your input, so it doesn't.

It really has so many cutting-edge features, but that's not really the point of the Grenadier, so you can forgive it for having a relatively average infotainment system. It's also worth noting that it has some cool features in its infotainment system, like the Pathfinder feature where you can record a route, so if you're on some interesting off-road trail that isn't marked on the map, you can record it here and then you can drive through it again later because you've already done it. You also have an off-road stats component within the menu where it will show you previous altitudes you've climbed to how far you've driven all that since you've driven and since you've driven off-road, which is kind of cool, but generally speaking the infotainment system It's pretty average, contains audio, various vehicle settings, but it won't be your main focus in this interior.

If you're the type of person who buys a Grenadier, infotainment is definitely an afterthought since you like the basic old school SUV now beyond all the controls I just showed you in the center of this interior you also have some buttons on the steering wheel that control other elements like the cruise control on the left which is pretty standard and on the right you have the stereo volume adjustment, but you also have the coolest Grenadier control of all, which is a little speaker that It says horn with a bicycle, get this, the Grenadier has a normal loud horn in the center of the steering wheel. press it and it sounds loud or if you just want to let someone know you're approaching without honking in anger you have the little beep which is a quieter secondary horn listen the reason you have a bike 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 piss everyone off, you can just honk the beep to let them know that you're approaching, that's a great feature that the Grenadier now has beyond. the steering wheel directly behind them, in fact you have the stock for the turn signals and the wipers which were borrowed from BMW, interestingly despite having borrowed the powertrain the grenade ear doesn't have that many things from BMW , it has the gear selector as I showed you. and the turn signal and wiper levers and also the hood release latch are from BMW.

You have to pull it twice to open the hood like new BMWs, but other than that, a lot of the things in this car are owned and created by Inos. It did not borrow it from other automakers, which is praiseworthy. Usually you get a small volume product from a new brand and you can see a lot of shared things that they had to pay for, not here, they went out and bought things themselves and beyond the controls on the front a couple of other quirks interesting for one on the passenger side you have a handle integrated into the dash it is very sturdy it is there if you are doing severe off road maneuvers to stabilize yourself and not go flying and hit your head or just grab it if you get scared.

I also like the fact that in the center of this whole dashboard situation you have a circular display that is not a clock, but a compass that shows direction and also shows your current heading. altitude and outside temperature, this is an adventure vehicle and those elements are importantwhen you're out on adventures and then we move on to the back seat, which is surprisingly spacious, old school really. The defenders are packed in behind, this is bigger than an old school model. The Defender and the interior make it clear that you have decent space. Leg room, everything is pretty good.

Unfortunately, the back seat has a few more drawbacks than I expected. It's hard to get into the back seat. The Grenadier is very high off the ground. So getting in is difficult and there's no grab handle mounted, maybe on the inside of the B pillar as some cars have to make it easy to get up, so it's a bit disappointing. The other big disappointment here is the lack of rear seat storage. passengers, you don't have nets in the back of the front seat for storage compartments like in most other cars and you don't even have cupholders back here because the center seat doesn't fold down as an armrest to make cupholders you're forced to make do with what that you have in the door pocket, which is not a shaped cup holder so your drink could spill for an off-road adventure vehicle that you would like to see with a little more storage I come back here, but I don't love the way it looks either the door panel compared to the pillar next to it.

You can see that these two elements were designed by totally different groups, the door panel looks good with its stitching and good materials and then it all stops at that center pillar. A well-designed and well-executed interior keeps the door panel design flowing and not just stopping because the door panel ends. a little nitpicky but you still notice a few things that aren't exactly perfect here now with that couple of things I love here, the large full size climate vents, which is nice to see on the back and directly below, which you have energy. USBC ports and a home port, all of which make adventures a little more useful and convenient in the back of the Grenadier and then we move on to the cargo area in the Grenadier.

Accessing the cargo area is now interesting because the tailgate is actually two doors that open individually instead of a traditional tailgate. Now the reason they do this is so they can mount a spare tire in 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 why the new Defender and 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 it has a small tailgate that you can open separately. from the main one, so if you only want to put small items inside, just open the small door and you can put them in without having to go to the trouble of opening the giant, heavy tailgate, but that also creates some inconveniences, the biggest of which is when you are driving you have a giant pole in the center of your rear window and you can see in the rearview mirror that the pole is very visible and certainly reduces your rear visibility.

This car would benefit greatly from a camera in the rear view mirror, but another interesting disadvantage is that the rear wiper only covers the large rear window, the small rear window window cannot be cleaned, which is another visibility disappointment. , but it's worth noting that there are heating elements in both. left and right rear windows, which is nice to see anyway climbing inside the rear of the Grenadier, the first thing you immediately notice is that the cargo area is absolutely huge. I've been reviewing many modern SUVs with their sloping roofs that go into the cargo. The area is not here, it is a giant space.

Square, rectangular, with enough space for anyone and of course the rear seats fold down. If you want even more space, you can get a lot of equipment in the Grenadier. There is a slogan for you that you also have in storage. floor, these hooks I mentioned that you can also place on the outside to keep gear 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 nets. or just to keep your equipment secure from sliding around. Also worth noting is another thing that I would really like about the cargo area of ​​the Grenadier: this panel here on the inside of the rear door, you open it and it is a small storage compartment now for

grenadier

s sold in Europe This is where you have to go its mandatory warning triangle, but in the United States, the land of the Free, we have no such mandates, so it is just an extra storage compartment where you can place smaller items to keep them private and make sure they are not rolling in the rear and then we move on to the rest of the CR exterior and features of the Grenadier, starting with the lighting.

Now, like most old-school SUVs, it has giant circular headlights, but they are updated to modern standards. These are LED headlights with a small circle of LED lights surrounding it that turns into an LED turn signal when the turn signal is turned on, ensuring that the illumination is better than what you would have gotten in an old Land Rover Defender gets the same deal at the rear, it has LED light circles for the taillights, brake lights and turn signals at the rear, an interesting exterior element that you can see on the driver's side, the signal side-mounted swivel, this is a mandate in Europe there.

There should be a turn signal on the passenger side. The side mounted turn signal is mounted on the snorkel which helps the engine breathe when you are cruising down a river. They had to move it from the body to the snorkel to comply with the regulations and it's a little funny to see that that happened now also on the outside of the Grenadier, the wheel and tire situation you can see steel wheels which are not common on a $80,000 SUV, but yes very common in a purpose-built off-roader and that's a Good to see you also have BF goodr ko2 all-terrain tires, my favorite all-terrain tire that comes standard on the Trial Master Grenadier and another interesting thing on the part front that you can see on the hood: you have these black plastic panels near the back.

If you look closely, they say they are powered by BMW W. Minos makes no attempt to hide the BMW origins of their 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 the next. We went down the side of the Grenadier. You can see these bars mounted on the side. These again are for the team. You can mount luggage racks on them. You can mount a roof box and keep it secure on these side bars. They are there for any purpose. you may need them and you can see plastic panels next to the side bars that have a small spoke that is there because they are electrically prepared.

If you want to have auxiliary lights on the side of your Grenadier you can install them here very easily, you just have to write plug and play and mount them and then they connect to the auxiliary switches on the roof so you can turn them on easily, you don't have to drill holes Not even wiring, it's all set up, which is nice and also interesting along the side of the car on the passenger side this is the fuel door, it's very well integrated, you wouldn't necessarily know it's there, even though it's huge , you press open and well, there it is, it's probably very big because, as I mentioned, there's a diesel.

Grenadier engine in other markets, so the diesel model would require a second small fuel filler for the diesel fuel additive, but in the United States we only have our gasoline engine model, so it looks unusually large. Below, another interesting article on the exterior of this Grenadier. It comes with a winch, it's an option, this one has it and it's really cool, it's hidden behind the folding faceplate, the plate is displayed there as you can see, but you can lift it up and out of the way to have access to its winch when needed by a cool hidden winch, it's a good idea and it's worth noting that the winch that comes with the Grenadier also comes with a remote control so you can use it from outside the truck or sitting inside the truck, you don't have to be standing right there, by pressing the buttons on the winch, which is a nice feature.

The last couple of interesting elements for one can see the Gren, here is the Vin. Interestingly, the VIN starts with the letter S, which is the country code. for the UK which symbolizes production in the UK, but this is not built there, it is built in France, the VIN starts with V which is a strange little problem for Vin Geeks like me. Now, speaking of the things you see on the outside of this truck, there are a lot of badges around this truck that tell you exactly what it is. You can see at the base of the windshield a small plate back here that tells you the equipment level and, of course, at the front, the Inos badge, then you move to the side where it has a small panel on the rear fender with the logo of inos and a small panel on the front fender that says inos on the rear also has the inos logo and then it says Grenadier on the tire cover and then on The Little Door the a on The

grenadier

has been called for some reason, I'm not sure why and that also appears back there, symbolizing what this ended up on the right side of the front fender, it has grenadiers stamped on it for another brand logo situation and on the mirrors, the rear view mirror.

Housing, you can see once again Grenadier, it's everywhere just to make sure from every angle you can tell what it is, even though you drive this and none of that is going to stop people from asking you what it is, as well as a couple of other specs interesting. The Grenadier weighs around 5900b, it is quite heavy and the result of its size and shape is about 14 to 15 m per gallon, it is not particularly efficient even with only a six cylinder under the hood, it is also about 194 inches long, which puts it squarely in the sort of medium-sized to slightly large territory, but certainly not as big as its boxy, tanned appearance might suggest, it's okay to drive the inos Grenadier Trial Master, which might as well be Trail Master because that's what everyone says even though it's technically wrong, not just technically wrong, in fact, wrong anyway, the first thing I notice when I get in this car that I love is the seating position, you sit high up and you look up at a square hood like an old-school truck or SUV.

I have a G van. I had an old Land Rover Defender before I had an old Range Rover Classic, so upright, sit here, look at the boxy feel of the bonnet, that's what I love about these vehicles, yes I'm pushing the limit of speed, thank you, uh, and I think. It's cool and I love that this car has it and these days most modern SUVs really don't have it. We've given that up in favor of things like pedestrian protection, things that really matter, but it's still really cool to see. On a big old square hood like an old school SUV, the second thing I notice when I start driving the Grenadier is that the steering is absolutely strange, the way it works is you turn the wheel, but unlike any other car, it doesn't. cancels it, you let go and it continues going in that direction, you actually have to actively turn it in a straight line so that when you turn left you don't let the steering wheel slide back through your fingers to straighten the car. you have to actively do it, yes I'm going to overspeed again, you have to actively turn the steering wheel back to the straight position to go straight again here, I'm turning and the car keeps going so I have to turn it back, it's crazy now .

Actually, I don't think it's that bad. I have driven a French car, a Citrone, which was also like that. You just have to get used to it, but it's an absolutely strange layout and situation. Well, next, the powertrain obviously drove this engine in a many BMWs and a Toyota is a great powertrain. I was worried this car would overtake it because it's a big Hulen vehicle, it's heavy, but it's not. This engine actually feels pretty good. The Grenadier certainly isn't fast, it isn't. a high performance vehicle by any stretch of the imagination, but it is totally acceptable for around town and driving even on the highway, accelerating at full speed, etc., it is not slow, it is actually important to mention it because you know that this car It's based on something. about the idea of ​​the original Land Rover Defender which was slow, which wasn't a particularly usable car in terms of accelerating up to the speed limit and the motorway and that sort of thing, this solves that problem and another problem it solves that the original The defender suffered um, it's surprisingly refined, you know, I saw this car just by looking at itand I thought, okay, that's going to be hard and shocking and difficult, and like the defender it was like it was something you had to endure.

It's really not the situation here, it's actually much better than I expected. In terms of ride quality, it's reasonably smooth and then you add a reasonably smooth powertrain and a reasonably smooth transmission. Yes, I know I'm going over the speed limit. Thanks, and it actually drives better than I expected. I was thinking that to get one of these you're making a big 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 the steering, honestly, I've Read some reviews online about this car that were quite negative.

I think they come from people who have never spent time in one of these truck-like SUVs and for the most part, I hate doing it. stereotype, but they were mostly younger people, um, who I think didn't really exist in the old school SUV days and maybe don't have any nostalgia for it, but I think if you spend time with these older trucks . SUVs have an undeniable appeal to you, like a nostalgia appeal, they're so cool and this one actually does a very good job of being like that without being as compromised as an old Defender or an old 60 series Land Cruiser or something like that, It is true that there are still compromises.

This thing that keeps telling me I'm over the speed limit is massively annoying and apparently you have to turn it on and off every time you start the car, there's no autonomous driving or driver assistance as it doesn't have some of the features you'd expect from an expensive new SUV, will appeal to a limited buyer base, like a G truck or a new Defender, is a better vehicle, has better technology, obviously has more of a dealer network support for reliability and service of that type of Stuff for the limited group of buyers who will want an old school SUV but brought into the modern era, this does a better job than I thought. and I'm actually quite impressed driving it, it does a good job of bringing old school to new in a better way than I thought inos would be able to do and that's the inos Grenadier that has gotten some criticism for its steering. feel your road manners and your entire driving experience but as an old school Land Rover Defender owner I understand that this is not for everyone, in fact it is only for a small group of people.but if you think the Today's off-road SUVs are too tough to leave the nursery and they are not tough enough, then this is for you and now it's time to give the Grenadier a score Doug and the Grenadier finishes here with 59 out of 100, which It places it in a fairly low position compared to rivals such as the new Land Rover Defender, the new Lexus GX, the G wagon, the rivan r1s, etc.

Honestly, I liked the Grenadier a lot more than I expected, but it has very little appeal that you should really overlook. all the benefits of rival SUVs from big-name brands to be able to try this emerging SUV, even despite its low-tech approach and worse road manners For people who long for the days of the old Defender and G wagon, this will have a big draw, but how many of those people really want to spend more than $80,000 on a new SUV? I guess Inos will find out.