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The similarities between the Ineos Grenadier and the Land Rover Defender have led to lengthy legal battles
B
eing a car journalist is like being an astronaut or working in a morgue – people are always fas- cinated by what I do. ‘Where are you going next?’ friends often
ask me, imagining I’m going to reply, ‘I’m fly- ing to Hawaii to spend three weeks driving a Ferrari.’ This time, however, I say, ‘I’m off to Scotland for a ride in the Ineos Grenadier.’ I see disappointment. ‘The what?’ ‘The Grenadier. The Ineos Grenadier.’ ‘The Ineos what?’ ‘The new, er… the new Land Rover thing.’ The new Land Rover thing. Both Ineos
and Land Rover will hate me for that. But it’s hard to explain the Grenadier in one sen- tence – Ineos didn’t even build cars until recently; it was too busy becoming a multina- tional chemical giant. And its first model
does have an unusual back-story… The founder, chairman and CEO of Ineos
is Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Born in Lancashire in 1952, he grew up in a council house, did a de- gree in chemical engineering and is now a billionaire. Being spectacularly wealthy means Ratcliffe has spent many happy hours in old Land Rovers, on various adventures, Scottish estates, African safaris etc. So when Land Rover ended production of its old-school Defender in 2016, Ratcliffe and a few friends met in a pub in Belgravia to nurse their pints and set the world to rights. Surely Land Rover was making a mistake, they lamented. Surely there was still a mar- ket for a utilitarian, hard-working off-roader? Despite most car manufacturers moving towards lifestyle-oriented SUVs, Ratcliffe was convinced the world still needed a tough,
no-nonsense, go-anywhere 4x4. So Ratcliffe – a chemicals magnate, remember – decided there and then to build his own. And he named it after the pub, the Grenadier. Now, most of us have had a stroke of genius late one night over a pint, only to completely forget about it the next morning. What’s re- markable is that Ratcliffe went on to start an entirely new car company, Ineos Automotive, and over the next five years spent a reported £650 million developing his new car. The project hit a couple of bumps along
the way. In 2019 Ineos said it would build the Grenadier in a new factory in Wales – but then in 2020 it bought a former Mercedes- Benz facility in France instead. It was a PR own-goal for the Brexit-supporting Ratcliffe, but the Hambach plant is state-of-the-art and comes with a ready-made workforce,
CHRISTIAN RIEFENBERG/BEADYEYE
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