A tall stack of international petro-dollars gives you a lot of elbow room to pursue your passions. In the case of INEOS Group Limited, creator of the new Grenadier SUV, the burly and retro-styled 4×4 vehicle is just one of the successful British oil and chemical conglomerate’s automotive sidelines—including owning a third of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team.
Freed from many of the financial challenges facing other auto startups, INEOS chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe set out to create a from-scratch off-roader to serve as a modernized tribute to the earliest-generation Land Rover Defender. Blocky, bulky, and totally at home on a Moab weekend trail trip, the French-built Grenadier “station wagon” (or the newer Quartermaster version, sporting a truck bed) is an exercise in old-school styling and performance.
With right-angled looks that make the Mercedes G-Class seem sleek by comparison, the five-seater Grenadier emphasizes rugged utility with a full-time, two-speed 4×4 system and, like the G-Wagen, three locking differentials. An old-fashioned ladder frame chassis, industrial truck axles, and recirculating ball steering contribute to somewhat less sophisticated on-road manners— especially if you’re used to modern electric-assist steering and self-leveling suspension systems—but the tradeoff is tremendous backcountry agility.
Even the cockpit looks like it’s from another era, as the Grenadier features a wall of aircraft-inspired controls with an analog-readout-heavy 12.3-inch touchscreen camouflaged into the stack, plus a classic-styled leather- wrapped wheel sporting a gentlemanly, lower-volume “toot” button for alerting cyclists. You’ll recognize a recent-generation BMW shift knob as one of the vehicle’s other anachronisms, attached to an eight-speed ZF transmission and the turbocharged 3.0-liter six-cylinder BMW engine INEOS has sourced to power the vehicle.
A basic build of the Grenadier can be purposefully sparse on luxury, but the upgraded 1924 Limited Edition, created with British outdoors clothier Belstaff, provides a more upscale look.
For more stats about the INEOS Grenadier, pick up the print issue of Denver Life Magazine at local newsstands or subscribe to the digital version.
