The Ineos Grenadier picks up where the old Land Rover Defender left off

Speaker 1: Welcome to a vehicle that looks well a little bit familiar, but we'll come back to that. This is the iNOS Grier. Speaker 1: And I feel we should probably introduce it because it is well, it's a whole new car company, [00:00:30] to be honest, let's start with the IIOS part of the name now IIOS you might have seen on various things. So it's on the side of Mercedes formula, one cars at the moment it's on the America's cup team boats. There's also an entire cycling team. That's uh, well, formally known as sky, but in us is a company it's a chemicals company and it has a 60 billion turnover annually, which is pretty enormous. And as a result, the founder. So Jim Ratcliffe is possibly the wealthiest man in the UK, [00:01:00] and he's the brains behind all this. And sort of certainly the, the outset, because he was in the pub one day with his friends and he was bemoaning the demise of the land Rover defender, the old one, and saw a gap in the market. Speaker 1: So he thought, why not? Let's build something to replace that. And this is it. The IIOS grew Grier. And we'll deal with the Grier bit of the name now because the Grier were always well, they were the, the tallest and strongest soldiers [00:01:30] in an army. They, they threw grenades fairly obviously, and this is a tall, big and strong vehicle. It is unashamedly. Utilitarian ill on purpose is the slogan they's used. You look around it and some of you might be seeing land over it. Some of you might be seeing GWA in it. Somebody you might be thinking Santana land Rover. If you are really into your land rovers, it's a body on frame design, no air suspension. [00:02:00] It's got live front and rear axles. It's got three, three locking differentials. It's got high and low ratios, obviously properties here, steel wheels there under the bonnet. Speaker 1: While we've got powered by BMW here, you've got choice of engine. So it's the B 57 on the B 58, engine B 57 being straight six diesel B 58 being straight six petrol turbo charged. And that's interesting as well with this cup because they've set up this company and they're not trying to do it all themselves. They've [00:02:30] partnered with various people. So BMW for one Z F is doing the gearbox Carras doing the axle. So people that know about this stuff, they're not trying to sort of design it all themselves. Magna is doing the engineering underneath the vehicle. They're a company that has done the GWA. They know what they're talking about. And what you've ended up with is this final pricing hasn't been revealed yet, but expected to start at around 45,000 pounds. Eventually they're hooked sell between 25 [00:03:00] and 30,000 a year. And to tell us a little more about who they think these people will be, we thought we'd speak to the head of design, cue them, moody lighting. I'd be thank so much for talking me around. Some of this pleasure right from you is, is who is the customer Speaker 2: For this? It's really designed to appeal to lots of different people, I guess, from, you know, to professional, to the farmer, to, to lifestyle and a buyer to military, to general professional use, I [00:03:30] guess. Speaker 1: And to that extent, there's obviously it's a nicely utilitarian vehicle. Just, just talk us through some of the things that you've done to make this as usable as possible for the, the widest variety of people. I mean, I think Speaker 2: We didn't really have any sort of preconceived ideas and we started and of, of what it was gonna look like in the end, but we had a, an idea of what it needed to do, what it sort of performance needed to be, which was based on lots of conversations with enthusiasm with professional users. And it [00:04:00] was really this, this idea of having a very basic, no nonsense, straightforward, as straightforward as we could possibly make it. And then this sort of day and age, you know, the, the body shape, I guess, was very, really derived from having sort of B ales with an engine on top of that, which then you has a, a knock on effect of, we didn't need a bonnet that covered the out front of the car because the engines in the middle there. So, and these sort of side rings always really useful that, you know, for leaning on to chat and interview or to, um, you know, to [00:04:30] cup tea, laptop, whatever. Speaker 2: Yeah. It becomes a, you know, as a, as a work vehicle mode, this becomes a sort of a work top and which was something that we sort of picked up on and we, we listen to, and, and it's actually, you know, by sort of default gives it the sort of character of the car. So all the sort of mechanical side of things with the, you know, the entry and exit angles wheels is essentially as far forward as we couldn't far back as we could, you know, obviously all help with the, with the offroading capabilities. It was sort of function first [00:05:00] on, on pretty much every element, you know, down to headlights and, you know, windscreen wipers, it was all, you know, what's the best way of doing this. What's the simplest way of doing this. And then we kind of took that away and then tried to, you know, put them all together in a coherent and elegant way, I guess, Speaker 1: Because this, you know, the whole idea is that it's going to have to work, work and survive and be repaired in fairly remote sort of location potentially. Speaker 2: And I think, I think there's sort of days of being able to [00:05:30] open the bonnet and throw a few screwdrivers and a hammer in there and, and it amend it probably gone just with the terms of how complicated engines are and, you know, the, all the, the clever things they have to do to beat emissions and, and, and be safe. But what we have tried to do is make all the systems around that as simple and as basic as we, as we can. So you can repair it to a much greater extent than you can with a lot of other, other vehicles and always have that in mind. Yeah. Even down to the sort of interior, the, the dashboard and [00:06:00] everything, which the idea is that you can take that apart. You can sort of repair that if you need to there's pre-wired switches in there. So if you do need to add a auxiliary equipment, which is very much a part of this type of vehicle that you probably would want to winch in some cases, and you know, this lighting and sort of power takeoff from there, then that's all sort of prewired. So you're not sort of having to sort of take everything apart and never quite go back together again properly, you know, we've tried to preempt as many of these sort of very sort of practical [00:06:30] angles as, as we could. Speaker 1: I know you said sort of, you know, there will be some accessory packages from in-house, but you've, you've worked with sort of external suppliers a lot to say that, you know, we realize this stuff already out there and yeah. Speaker 2: And I, and I think it's a very big part of owning a vehicle like this is that, you know, people do customize and they, you know, they have their own own needs. And then part of that is that, you know, there's enormous number of people that are, are making, you know, whether it's rebar or winters or, you [00:07:00] know, additional lighting. And it made sense to, to work with them rather than give them a, a very sort of rigid platform that, so it has to work with this, you know, so with the rhubarb, for example, we, we talk to people who, who make really good rebar. And so what would you need for, for your, for an ideal rebar to work on here? And we work with them, you know, in collaboration with them on a, on a design. And so actually we need a really strong fixing point, you know, above the world. And so, you know, we do our best to sort of include that in our sort of under the [00:07:30] skin construction so that, you know, that, that works, you know, there's load of knowledge that, you know, why would we ignore that? And, you know, let's embrace and, and work with, with everybody cuz it's, you know, it's a big part of what the Speaker 1: Car does. Yeah. I know you had a few, um, interesting suggestions or sort of questions from the military outlets. Yeah. Speaker 2: So we, we talked to, um, sort of special forces guys and um, their questions were quite kind of left field. Can you turn the brake lights off? Can we fit infrared, uh, [00:08:00] you know, within, in the lights in the front here, um, you know, brilliant question and kind of little insight into, into their world, I guess. And obviously we can't turn brake lights off on, you know, on, on a road legal car, but that's the sort of, uh, sort of level, I guess, of different sort of requests that, that come in and all sorts of other examples as well. But I think they are most amusing. Speaker 1: And obviously here we've got, which I think is the, the M one configuration. So we've got the, the five seats there's gonna be N one [00:08:30] with two rows of seats and then N two and you can fit the Euro pallet and Speaker 2: The back that's correct. Yeah. So the only difference really is that the rear seats and the, the N one is that there's a guard that goes across between the, the maintenance of the seating cabin and the, and the load space and the seats are slightly more upright, but yeah, you can get a Euro pallet in the back. Speaker 1: Seems like it's being quite good, fun to Speaker 2: Design this. It has. I mean, there's been challenges of course, but obviously is it possible to make something that complies with everything everywhere, uh, without adjusting [00:09:00] the design for each country? You know, that's a, that's a fairly big, big thing to sort of get your head around, but essentially, you know, it is good fun. And, you know, I think the end use has always sort of been in mind and it IST a big, big luxury SUV. It's not a sport car. It's for a lot of people. This is gonna be the, the route to some really good times. And you know, it's a recreational vehicle for, for a lot of people. You know, I think that sort of hopefully comes through a little bit in, in the design as well. It's not all very, very serious. Speaker 1: [00:09:30] Excellent. Terry, thank you very much. No pleasure. Thank you. Well, that was all very reactable wasn't it. Now, there is one part of the Grier that we haven't really looked at yet the interior and at first glance, it's, it's pretty cool. Actually love all switches up here. There's a distinctly sort of, um, aircraft maritime feel about all of this, basically. So switches down here are all your sort of HVAC. Control's got heated seats, uh, climate, control's got the hazard warning [00:10:00] there and then up here is generally all your offroad stuff. And everything's labeled, which I really quite like I'm saying it's a big car. Uh, see it's 2.13 meters wide, and it's 2.03 meters tall. The panels up here and down here in, they've all got, um, screws. You can take them all out so you can get to dubs the electronics behind them, either fix them or to add in extra things up here. Speaker 1: And you've got all sorts of isolated switches up here, and the whole thing is wired so that you want to add in accessories [00:10:30] or, you know, whatever for campaign or whatever sport you're doing or whoever you are trying save then, um, that's all very possible with this overall it's, there's not as much room in here as you might expect, given that it's a, a big vehicle. It's certainly, um, it's not cramped and it's not like a, an old defender, so you're not sort of right up against the window here, but it is sort of quite small. This is sort of an option. You got all sorts of logs and everything here, and you've got a domestic three pin back [00:11:00] there as well. And they've, they've put real effort into making sure that this is a power source really works basically. So you can charge whether it's tools or as I say, or outdoor equipment or whatever it is gotta touch screen up here. Speaker 1: There's gonna be a little screen down here just because for legal reasons, you have to have, uh, your of speed and your sort of various warning lights directly in front of you. But essentially you've got a really nice clear view out in front. It doesn't come with its own navigation system as such, uh, it's got apple CarPlay or Android [00:11:30] auto for that, but it has got an off road navigation system, uh, which I think it's called Pathfinder. So you can put your way points in if you par der or whatever, then you know, you can plot your Waypoint across country, which is quite cool. Just notice this as, as well. So you've got your navigation, but you have also got your nice little compass up there as well. Other things that are worth mentioning the fact that, although this is a touch screen, you can operate everything via buttons down here. Speaker 1: The idea that if you get into this and [00:12:00] you've got big wet gloves on, then you're not stabbing around at a touch screen up here. You can operate everything when you're cold and muddy, et cetera, talking of that, this car's got some, some carpets in, but obviously because it seems to be a big thing, it has, uh, no carpets of standard and it's a hose down interior. So you've got the plugs in the bottom from this level up, it's all splashproof. So, you know, it should be hard wearing because they, they want this to be something that does last, you know, is durable. [00:12:30] Having said that there are, and sort of little bits to, of luxury here. So this wheel, and in fact, the handwriting down here covered in saddle leather, because Toby was saying, he, he likes the idea that it will get some pattern over the years and it shouldn't all just be sort of, sort of hard wiring plastics. Speaker 1: It really, they wanted to be comfortable as well. So these seats are from CCA and they feel very nice de a couple of bits of color in here cause its predominantly sort of monochrome, isn't it? But we've got red and green [00:13:00] port and starboard it's um, up here somewhere as well. Yep. To stop there. And then this red button here, which has got a little picture of a bicycle and says do, and obviously the IIO gr are a cycling team, very successful cycling team. And one of the things that came back from them and something that, to be honest, I've always thought cause I cycle as well. When you're cycling on the road, a lot of the time you don't actually hear traffic come up behind you because of your cycling long it's a 20 miles an hour. Um, even [00:13:30] less than that, then the wind noise just means that it's, it's quite difficult to hear what's you obviously, if you're a car driver, it's nice to let people know that you are behind sort of, you know, cyclist, but you don't want to do it with a full on people on the horn because that will scare the life out of, um, whoever's in front, it might be a horse or something like that, sot, which is a much friendlier horn. Speaker 1: So there we go. I like that detail other things to mention this car doesn't have it. You will be able to get glass panels in the roof up here, which apparently changes the field quite a lot. I can imagine [00:14:00] that. And gear selector very obviously BMW. They did think about creating their own one. They had all sorts of lovely designs, but the cost of tooling that up, well, it was just prohibitive. It would've been passed onto the end user. So they figured it's just not really worth it. So that's the reason that exists there we are. Then I think it's a pretty cool interior actually functional, but that has its own cool one things for sure. Inal certainly doesn't [00:14:30] seem to do things by halves. A billion euros is being invested in bringing the grand ear to market and a complete lead factory has been purchased sadly not in Wales as was initially suggested, but in handbag in France, it was actually previously dam's smart fill factory. Speaker 1: And in fact, any else is continuing to build smart cars under contract in order to get up to speed with car manufacturing. So what do you all think? Is it a genuine defender replacement? Is it more of a GWA alternative? Is it more appealing than a new defender? Is it [00:15:00] too basic? Is it not basic enough? I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments down below one thing for sure. It should be fun. Dreaming up somewhere to test one when it's ready, which should be in 28 22. Thank you very much indeed for watching and thank you very much to those of you that have subscribed to the channel whether recently or years ago. And if you haven't then please do think about helping us reach that magic million mark.