At 944,735 square kilometres, British Columbia is almost the area of four Great Britains. B.C. may be an explorer’s paradise, but to properly get to grips with the backcountry, you need a machine fit for purpose. From England, by way of France and Germany, the Ineos Grenadier makes tracks where lesser machines fear to tread.
Ineos is a name you may already be familiar with if you’ve watched a Formula 1 race or two. The company is a main sponsor of the Mercedes-AMG F1 team, its logo spread across the rear wing of the car. Ineos is one of the largest chemical companies in the world, and it sponsors everything from sailing to cycling to charitable work in primary schools. And as of the 2024 model year, it will sell you one of the most rugged modern off-roaders ever made.
From the outside, the Grenadier’s boxy silhouette lends a familiar shape to an unfamiliar name. Off-road capability seems to lend itself to plain sheet metal arranged at right angles, as evidenced by the likes of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class or the Ford Bronco. Squint, and you might mistake the Grenadier for a Land Rover Defender—not the curving modern version but the old-school battler with its blunt and simple charms. This is on purpose.
The Grenadier is the brainchild of Ineos founder Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Besides founding and running a multibillion-dollar company, Ratcliffe is an inveterate explorer, having run a marathon across the Sahara, climbed the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, and travelled to both the North and South poles. He has long been a fan of the original Defender’s rugged and anachronistic charisma, and when Land Rover announced plans to radically update it, Ratcliffe at first offered to buy the old production machinery. Land Rover demurred.
The Grenadier wears the automotive equivalent of Wellington boots, and it is not afraid to get them dirty.
Instead, Ratcliffe’s idea was to build an ultimate expression of the Defender’s old-school ideals but with a far greater durability and capability provided by modern engineering. The chassis is a ladder frame, like that of the aging Toyota 4Runner, but immensely strong, with up to 3.5-millimetre steel. Power comes from a thoroughly modern, turbocharged BMW inline-six good for 284 horsepower.
The Germanic influence runs a little deeper, as the Grenadier is built in the former Mercedes plant in Hambach, France. Split-flag badges on the fenders reflect this shared heritage. As for the vehicle’s name, it’s taken from the pub in which the idea was first conceived. What could be more British than that?
Underneath, the Grenadier has standard full-time four-wheel-drive and up to three locking differentials for maximum grip, with a manually operated low-range transfer case for tackling the steepest slopes at a crawl. It has about as much ground clearance as the most extreme Jeep Wranglers. Skid plates protect the underside from damage. It can wade through water 80 centimetres deep.
Ineos mounted a gruelling testing schedule: convoys of these boxy offroaders tackled terrain from the frost of northern Sweden to the heat of Morocco to above 14,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. Some 130 prototype vehicles covered a staggering 1.8 million kilometres.
Really, though, two characteristics tell the story of the Grenadier’s nature. The first is the wheels, which are either 17 or 18 inches in diameter. Mercedes sells its G-Class with up to 22-inch wheels for impressing downtown valets or cruising to Park Royal. The Grenadier wears the automotive equivalent of Wellington boots, and it is not afraid to get them dirty.
The second surprise is the Grenadier’s handshake, the feedback you get from behind the wheel. Most passenger cars and dual-purpose crossovers have self-centring steering that returns to straight ahead once you’ve made the turn. The Grenadier requires you to make the course correction yourself. It’s designed as protection against a steering wheel kicking back when traversing a heavily rutted trail, but ultimately it also places the driver firmly in charge.
Thus, the Grenadier is comfortable but not coddling. It’s the sort of no-nonsense SUV the old Defender was, just with a modern powertrain and obsessive engineering of the details. The rear cargo area, for instance, is wide enough to accept an industrial pallet. The Grenadier is not a toy—it is expected to work, and work hard.
Which is not to say there isn’t great delight to be had on the inside of this burly off-roader. The switchgear is fantastic: an aircraft-inspired and tactile antidote to the big touchscreens you find on most other vehicles. Expected everyday technology such as wireless smartphone connection is there, but this is an interior intended to be functional decades down the road. There are other fun touches too, including a steering-wheel-mounted toot button, intended to give cyclists or pedestrians a cheery hello. Optional safari-style windows brighten up the cabin.
A simple spin around the city feels like an expedition. A passer-by flashes a thumbs up at the Grenadier’s friendly face. Despite the old-school underpinnings, it’s a far less agricultural ride than the Defender was, though the upright seating position and vertical glass preserve the charm.
But that’s just to get you to the trailhead. The Grenadier is built as a key to unlock the wilderness, whether as nearby as Harrison’s forest service roads or as far afield as the Peace River district. It won’t hold your hand with layers of complex terrain-management software, but neither will it let you down hours away from civilization with a computerized fault.
It’s a recipe that perfects the essence of a beloved off-road explorer, the kind that doesn’t look right without at least a little mud spattered across its flanks. With 2024-year models on the horizon for delivery, the Ineos Grenadier may not exactly be a common sight on B.C. backroads anytime soon, but you will find it out there where the wild things are.
Nearly a million square kilometres of potential. A vehicle built by and for explorers. The Ineos Grenadier may be a little too no-nonsense off-roader for a casual commuter. But if you have an adventurer’s heart, it will take you wherever you point it.
