Ineos Grenadier Fieldmaster review

Yet the Grenadier hasn’t been immune to the effects of Covid and production has been pushed back as the shortages of electronic components bit – this launch was supposed to take place last autumn…

While we are expecting to see a pick-up/chassis cab version of the Grenadier this autumn (and eventually a smaller, more crossover-style, battery-electric SUV based on Magna’s skateboard concept), for the moment there’s just one Grenadier version in two-seat Utility trim priced from £55,000, or a five-seat station wagon priced from £58,000, with a couple of better-equipped Belstaff-jacket-inspired special editions of the latter: the Fieldmaster and the Trialmaster both priced from £69,000 – you’ll never guess who owns Belstaff… Our well-specced Fieldmaster test vehicle retailed at £75,923 and the waiting list currently stands at about 10 months.

The Grenadier is 4896mm long, 2146mm wide with the mirrors out, 2036mm high and runs on a 2922mm wheelbase. It weighs between 2644kg and 2744kg for the fully specced Fieldmaster trim. It’s based on a ladder-frame separate chassis, MIG welded and fully flitch-plated, with side members up to six inches deep. Coil springs and telescopic dampers keep the front and rear solid axles in check and there’s a steering box rather than a rack and pinion arrangement.

BMW’s engines are both 3-litre straight sixes, available as a twin-turbo 245bhp/406lb ft diesel, or a 281bhp/332lb ft single-turbo petrol, with a ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox on both. Top speed is 99mph regardless of which pump you fill from, with 0-62mph in 8.6sec for the petrol and 9.9sec for the diesel. Fuel consumption is at best 21.4mpg for the petrol and 27.4mpg for the diesel – on the launch we saw 19.5mpg from the diesel on freezing off-and-on-road work.

There’s permanent four-wheel drive, with a two-speed transfer case to give a set of crawler gears, with a standard locking centre differential and optional locking differentials in the front and rear; these come in the £1765 Rough Pack, which includes BF Goodrich KO2 off-road tyres.

There’s also a £1435 Smooth Pack, which comprises a rear-view camera, front parking assistance, powered and heated door mirrors, heated windscreen washers, a lockable centre storage box, puddle lamps and ambient door lighting and auxiliary charging points, arguably all things you’d want on your Grenadier whatever you were going to do with it. Wheel choice is between 17 inches with those BF Goodrich tyres and 18 inches with Bridgestone intermediate all-terrain, all-season tyres.

This sort of configuration with body-on-separate-frame and solid beam axles gives theoretical better axle articulation, ground clearance (particularly under the differentials) and more robust underpinnings than the sort of all-independent suspension and monocoque construction adopted by Land Rover for the new Defender model. While some consider Land Rover’s actions close to sacrilege (including the fact it isn’t built in the UK either), Land Rover counters that most of those geometrical disadvantages can be assuaged with air suspension and compact suspension design.

So, and for the record, the Grenadier’s off-road stats (with the new Defender 110’s figures in brackets) are: ground clearance 264mm (291mm), wading depth 800mm (900mm), approach angle 35.5 degrees (38deg), ramp breakover angle 28.2deg (28deg), departure angle 36.2deg (40deg). Both Grenadier and Defender will tow up to 3.5 tonnes. So it’s hard to see in these terms that the Defender is actually suffering for its monocoque construction and independent suspension.

I make first acquaintance in the floodlit snowy car park of Inverness airport. Take in the flat windscreen, clamshell bonnet, heavily shouldered waistline, exterior door handles and spare wheel on the tailgate and it’s difficult not to think of the old Defender, perhaps even a bit of the 1950s Austin Gypsy/Champ, and maybe a bit of the old Geländewagen too.

Either way it looks like a pretty useful tool to have in these steadily worsening conditions. Climb in (and it’s a bit of a clamber) and your first impressions are of a lofty driving position with decent views out to the front and sides, but not so much to the rear. Seat controls are clankily mechanical, the dashboard is filled with big push-button switches, although there is a BMW gearlever and a BMW touchscreen on the top of the dash, which apparently is essential to power up the electronic architecture of the German drivetrains.

The driving position is reasonably comfortable and will seem positively luxurious to those used to original Defenders, but seat travel is limited for the tallest drivers and the seat and steering are offset from the pedals, so your right leg is hitched slightly outwards. The rear seats are comfortable with just about enough leg and head room for six footers three abreast. The seat backs split 60/40 onto their bases, but the load bed is uneven and there’s no ski hatch, so you’ll have to store them on one side of the cabin or on the roof. Luggage capacity is 1152 litres with the rear seats up, 2035 litres with them down. Equivalent figures for the Defender 110 are 499/1946 litres. The Fieldmaster version gets standard seat heaters, but on everything else they cost £320 and leather upholstery can be had for just under £1800.

We’ve been shown the interior already of course, but there’s a world of difference between clicking and pushing in a warm, dry studio over a cappuccino, and sitting in a frozen cabin in the middle of a blizzard trying to get operational in bulky coats with gloved hands. You can see what Ineos was seeking to do here, with the tough plastic-panelled cabin with rubber floors (you can specify carpet if you must), which should take the knocks and scrapes and gain an attractive patina on the way.

But it isn’t that kind to knees and elbows and it genuinely doesn’t look that good on a £76,000 vehicle. Our car had the optional £655 saddle leather covering for the steering wheel and one of the three passenger grab handles, which is lovely, but why doesn’t that leather cover the other two grab handles? Moreover, if the front passenger gets a climbing-in grab handle to help with access, then what about the driver and rear-seat passengers who have to claw their way in using the head restraints, helping hands from fellow passengers, or a running jump?

In the front there aren’t enough storage spaces and those that are there are poorly thought out. The shallow depression on the driver’s-side dash top, which might have held a mobile telephone, isn’t deep enough and has a slippery lining. The door pockets are unlined and mean, and the bottle-sized space in the door bottom is small and not easy to reach. There’s a phone-sized space in front of the gearlevers, but it’s equally obscured.

These cars were just-before-production vehicles, but they suffered more than a few glitches: the passenger-side door mirror failed to defrost; the doors required very different levels of slam to shut; there was an intermittent whine from the front differential; the differential locks often failed to engage and then after they’d disengaged, they’d fail to tell the software of that fact which locked out other functions. The transferable software for the Pathfinder sat-nav failed to transfer; the wipers left the top half of the windscreen dirty and the washers didn’t squirt in the right place while poor aerodynamics meant the side screen quickly became opaque with road dirt so you struggled to see the door mirrors…

Yes, it was cold and grotty, but keeping a flat windscreen clear shouldn’t be difficult; my brother-in-law’s farm Defender has better wipers and washers than this. And while all these niggles were fixable, they don’t bode well for a brand new car.

And some of the design foibles are borderline inexplicable. That asymmetrically-split rear door for instance, which leaves a bisected and obstructed view out of the back in the rear-view mirror, just as it did on the old Isuzu Trooper. Or those overhead switches which are darned hard to identify in a hurry and believe me, when you’re sliding backwards down an icy track with a sheer escarpment on one side, you’ll want to find those diff locks, pronto. Or the stubby lever, which engages the transfer box and centre diff lock, which requires a very old-school brawny tug to move and doesn’t always engage or disengage. Yes, it fits with the Grenadier’s unashamed analogue mechanical ethos, but how does that ethos sit with the electrically engaged front and rear differential locks or the digital touchscreen? There’s also the optional front winch (£3345) that lurks behind the front bumper and is covered by a plastic panel with the registration plate on it, which is fine if you do all your winch recovery work off the King’s Highway…

The Grenadier starts with a real ignition key and whatever fuels it, the big BMW six growls into life. It stays growling, too, as if the engine mounts had been crafted from lignum vitae, with all the absorbency of that ultra-hard wood.

This was week two of the extended Grenadier launch which Ineos called Expedition One. It tackled some pretty fearsome stretches on its way down the spine of Great Britain south from John O’Groats. I was looking for some serious forays into the Highlands but the inclement weather meant the snow gates on the high passes were closed so the route from Inverness began with a long stretch of the A9, one of the longest passages of speed camera-monitored roads in the country. Droning along at 50 to 60mph wasn’t the greatest showcase for the Grenadier with a gritty fizz from those heavily cleated tyres channelled straight into the cabin, and then there was that piss-poor windscreen cleaning, which meant continuously flicking the wipers and hoping. Whichever engine is chosen there’s quite a lot of drivetrain vibration in the cabin, though it disappears if you stand on it as the BMW mill attempts to enervate some 2.8 tonnes of bluff-fronted 4×4. Fast? No, but brisk enough for the capabilities of the tyres.

Frankly the Grenadier doesn’t make much sense on the road, and it isn’t much of an improvement over the dynamics of the old model Defender, though the ride is more comfortable. The steering is very low geared with little self centring and there’s quite a bit of free play so it wanders around with the road camber and undulations, with vague and uncertain turn-in to corners, often requiring a second correction once you’ve made the initial movement. It’s very old school in that respect and not very nice or confidence inspiring to drive on slippery, winding tarmac roads. And like the heavy trucks I drove when I first came into this industry, the Grenadier is best driven with just one hand on the steering wheel so you don’t inadvertently input yet more wander into the equation. It should be said here that the intermediate Bridgestone tyres weren’t available to drive so we’ve no idea what an improvement they might bring, but we look forward to finding out.

The payback should be in sheer off-road ability. As we turned off the road onto the ethereally beautiful Ardverikie Estate, the Grenadier felt much more at home; stable, its wheels dug into the light snowy surface and never less than a stout place to be. That initially soft suspension response keeps things calm but not tippy. Excellent wheel articulation keeps the tyres in contact through the most cross-axling terrain and the lugged tyres grip like your least favourite aunt’s marmalade tabby’s claws on your thighs.

The BMW engines provide lovely low-down grunt and superb accelerator response (the diesel only marginally better in this respect) and the whole car ‘walks’ along a rough track with the best, and with no great need to take jolting run ups to hazards to give momentum; you really can do it on tickover in most cases. While tricky to engage and disengage, the low ratios and three differential locks give immense confidence on icy, rocky slopes where you really need to travel at the speed of the tyre with the most grip and no more. And while again, the hill descent control isn’t the easiest to engage, it provides sure-footed and secure travel down some horribly slippery tracks. I have to say, faults notwithstanding, on a tough and challenging route the Grenadier behaved brilliantly and felt perfectly at home.

But is it any better in this regard than the Defender old or new, the new Ford Bronco, the Jeep Wrangler, or the new Mercedes-Benz G-Class? Conversations like this are invidious because so much depends on the tyres, the driver, the terrain and the day. I have a theory that all these manufacturers have their own development grounds that only their vehicle will get over without issue. Think Jeep’s Rubicon Trail, Land Rover’s Eastnor Castle or Solihull Jungle Track, or Magna Steyr’s Austrian test track on Schöckl Mountain, all different, all super challenging and all designed to bring out the best in each respective manufacturer’s 4×4.

Moreover, these comparisons are academic as there’s little sense of jeopardy when you’ve got endless backup, recovery vehicles, a doctor and a team of experts to guide you through. In real extreme conditions, an experienced driver will be weighing up the risks of taking a vehicle off-road to provide backup for rescue teams, pick up that sick sheep, or provide equipment for the linesmen and women. Tear a sidewall out of the tyre on an unseen rock and you could make things much worse than they already are, which is why often the best off-roading decisions are to get out and walk.

But the Grenadier cannot live by off-road ability alone. It must also compete with the aforementioned, long established big hitters for image and charisma, on-road ability and luxurious comfort for those who imagine they might do an awfully big adventure next Tuesday week, but for the moment have to get the children to school and then on to Waitrose. On this evidence the Grenadier has bags of the first but not much of the other two and that matters. Jim Ratcliffe could probably buy the first year’s production out of Hambach and use them in his petro-chemicals plants, but in the end Grenadier has to appeal across all markets to make it a commercial success.

And the truth is that while not one Grenadier actually failed to proceed, if Land Rover, Jeep, Mercedes-Benz, or Isuzu had presented a vehicle with this number of schoolboy faults and errors, we’d have had their guts for garters. I got a feeling that the entire operation hasn’t got the sort of quality and attributes control that exists at rivals, or at least not yet; think of a team of highly experienced engineers giving every department a hard time and reporting directly to the board. Ineos Automotive needs a figure like JLR’s now retired but formerly long time vehicle attributes engineer Mike Cross or someone very like him to tell the boss that, frankly, this isn’t good enough.

What the Grenadier does well, it does really well, but you simply can’t sell a new car from a new company for this kind of money with this many faults and design mistakes to beady-eyed farmers, tough-talking utilities, craggy experienced adventurers and off-roaders, or just those facing a choice of some excellent rivals such as the current Defender, G-Class, or Jeep; they simply won’t come back and they’ll tell all their friends why.

The story is charming, but the Grenadier is in danger of becoming the punch line of that ‘three men walked into a pub’ joke. Let’s hope it gets sorted before that happens.