INEOS Grenadier Commercial Review & Prices

What do you get when one of the UK’s richest companies decides to have a go at making a new version of the ‘classic’ Land Rover Defender? Well, you end up with the Ineos Grenadier - a hardcore off-road vehicle with an old-fashioned feel but made of modern components. It’s available as a regular SUV, but you can also buy the ‘Commercial’, which has two seats and an enclosed load area.

It’s a van for people who need to deliver to the middle of a muddy field more often than they do a housing estate; people for whom rock-crawling is much more important than kerb-crawling. Imagine if Postman Pat kept operating in the post-apocalypse - this is the sort of van he might use. Alternatives include the Land Rover Defender Hard Top or Toyota Land Cruiser Commercial.

The Grenadier is the brainchild of Sir Jim Ratcliffe, of Ineos Chemicals - probably not the sort of company you’d expect to build cars, but much of the engineering was outsourced to Austrian company Magna - the same company that builds the Mercedes G-Class, among many others.

The Grenadier stands out from more modern off-roaders, sharing lots of design features with classic 4x4s while adding a modern edge. So its circular head and taillights are all-LED, and its boxy dimensions hide up-to-date engines. It’s still based on a hardwearing ladder-frame chassis, though, which has positive effects on its off-road ability.

The interior is just as unconventional. There’s a central screen that deals with both driver information and infotainment, while underneath you’ll find an aircraft-style control panel for the climate controls and other supplementals. There’s another panel overhead which contains the off-roading controls, so you’ll really feel like a pilot behind the wheel of the Grenadier - and all the buttons and switches are big and designed to be pressed while wearing gloves.

For the Commercial model, the comfy front seats have a mesh bulkhead immediately behind them, and behind that you’ll find a long, flat load area which you can access through either the side doors or the asymmetrically-split tailgate. The payload of around 800kg is nothing like as impressive as even the best small vans, but it’s in line with most other commercial 4x4s including the Land Rover Defender Hard Top.

The Grenadier is powered by a choice of petrol or diesel engines - they’re both 3.0-litre, six-cylinder ones that are sourced from BMW. They’re amply powerful, but the price you pay for the Grenadier’s heavy construction is fuel consumption of around 20mpg even from the diesel.

The off-road focus affects its on-road manners too - the steering, designed not to kick back if you hit an obstacle - is very slow and vague, with minimal self-centring. The turning circle is also absolutely vast.

Of course, if your focus is less on the tarmac, then you won’t be disappointed. The Grenadier can off-road with the best, easily the equal of the Land Rover Defender - and with its selectable low-range gearbox and all those switches, the Grenadier feels like a more analogue experience, which you might like.

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The Grenadier Commercial qualifies as a van for tax purposes, which means business users can reclaim the VAT. That means it starts from just under £52,000 ex. VAT. Both engines cost the same, so you won’t pay extra for the diesel - but you can quite easily add on several thousand pounds in options. For the ultimate in off-road capability - which after all, is what the Grenadier is all about - you’ll want things like the £2,600 Rough Pack which brings differential locks and BFGoodrich off-road tyres.

Front and rear winches are also available, as is a fixed or removable tow bar should you wish to use the Grenadier’s 3.5-tonne towing capacity.

That price makes it just a little more expensive than either a Land Rover Defender Hard Top or a Toyota Land Cruiser Commercial, but there’s little difference in it - all three cost more than £50,000 ex. VAT.

Strong engines, but the Grenadier’s steering could be enough to put off quite a few drivers

The Grenadier comes with a choice of two engines - they’re both 3.0-litre straight-six units directly from BMW’s range of cars. The petrol has 286hp while the diesel has 247hp. In practice, you get very similar performance - both are more than capable of cruising on the motorway or getting up to speed with no issues, though the diesel is much noisier than the petrol.

An eight-speed automatic gearbox comes as standard, too, and it shifts quickly and smoothly with the ability to easily lock it into a gear when you’re off-roading. Next to the slightly incongruous shifter (identical to the one you get in a BMW sports car…) is a purposeful-looking lever to engage the low-range gearbox for maximum torque when off-roading.

When low-range is engaged, along with the differential locks (a centre one is standard, front and rear optional), then the Grenadier is almost unstoppable off-road and can go anywhere its tyres have traction. Very capable BFGoodrich off-road tyres are optional if you need more grip than the standard ones, too. It’s a different experience to the Land Rover Defender - which feels like its computers are doing all the hard work for you - in the Grenadier you feel like much more a part of the machine.

That off-road focus does spoil its on-road manners, though. It’s acceptably comfortable over bumps for an off-roader, and despite the bluff bodywork it’s not even too blustery on the motorway. The real issue is the steering, which uses an old-fashioned setup designed to reduce kickback if you hit an unexpected obstacle off-road.

While it does that very well, it means that you get a terrible turning circle (forget doing a full 180 round a mini-roundabout), very little self-centring, and a vague and wooly feeling to the steering. You also need to make constant corrections while you’re driving along. It makes the Grenadier very tiring to drive around town or on a long motorway trip.

The Grenadier Commercial can carry a decent amount, but the rear doors are annoying and tie-downs are optional

The Grenadier’s long, flat loading area can be accessed through the rear side doors which remain fully in place, albeit with their glass blacked out. You can also get to it through the rear doors, which open barn-style and are split 70:30. This divide, as well as the spare wheel mounted on the larger door, means you get precious little rear visibility, though it is easier to open them in tight spaces than the single wide door on a Land Rover Defender Commercial.

The load floor is hard, skiddy plastic, so a grippy floor covering should be top of your list. There’s also no tie-down points unless you specify them, which is a bit stingy. You can, however, get a heavy-duty roof rack as well as a ladder on the rear door to help you access it.

Ineos Grenadier Commercial internal and external measurements

Exterior dimensions

Length: 4,895mm
Width with mirrors: 2,146mm
Width without mirrors: 1,930mm
Height: 2,050mm

Interior dimensions

Maximum load length: 1,687mm
Maximum load width: 1,268mm
Maximum load height: 1,047mm
Width between wheel arches: 1,064mm

Towing capacity

No surprises here - the Grenadier can tow the maximum figure of 3,500kg. Fixed or removable towbars are available on the options list. We’ve used a Grenadier to tow a trailer of around 1,500kg, and found that the car’s weight and ample power from those six-cylinder engines made short work of it.

Payload

Payload varies depending on what options you’ve selected, but on our highly-specified diesel test model it was 796kg.

That’s broadly on par with the Land Rover Defender Hard Top and Toyota Land Cruiser Commercial, both of which come in around the 800kg mark. You don’t buy a commercial 4x4 for maximum load capacity, after all - the best small vans such as the Citroen Berlingo will easily carry more weight than that, they just won’t do it in such extreme conditions.

Aircraft-style controls look cool, but there are a few usability issues

The Ineos Grenadier definitely thwarts any notion of cars going all-touchscreen - there are dozens of buttons strewn across the dashboard and the roof, giving you quick access to just about every function. They’re all big and separated, designed to be pressed while wearing gloves, and they’re all clearly labelled too.

The centre console has things like the air-conditioning controls, radio volume, seat heaters and hazard warning lights - plus, if you spec it, a very cool compass and clock unit in the middle. Meanwhile, the panel on the roof contains all your off-roading controls such as differential locks - plus the switches for any auxiliary items you might have fitted like a winch or light bar. It’s very cool-looking.

The centre touchscreen has your driver instrumentation on one side and a barebones entertainment system on the other. While you can interact with this via a rotary dial in the centre console, this isn’t quite as easy as just reaching out and touching the screen. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are both standard, though you’ll have to plug into USB to charge and there isn’t really anywhere convenient to leave a phone.

There are just a few usability niggles that make the Grenadier needlessly frustrating to use. Having your driving information on the centre screen means you constantly have to keep moving your eyes away from the road ahead. Then there are small items, like the stereo volume only having a few steps so it’s always either too loud or too quiet - the air-con temperature has the same problem, actually.

Build quality is tank-like, though, and the surfaces all feel reassuringly wipe-clean. The seats are comfortable and the driving position is pretty good, with the exception of your left foot which is very cramped due to a bulge in the floor.

Neither of the Grenadier’s engines are very efficient. In fact, they’re quite incredibly thirsty. During a week with the diesel model we averaged just 20.9mpg, and in the petrol that figure is more like 18mpg. Even with a massive 90-litre fuel tank, that means you can’t even go 400 miles between fillups - even some electric cars can do that now.

Other running costs aren’t too bad. The Grenadier Commercial pays the same flat rate of road tax and Benefit-in-Kind tax for company car users as other vans, rather than the CO2-based system now applied to double-cab pickup trucks. That means it’s significantly cheaper on a monthly basis than something like a top-spec Ford Ranger.

Standard safety kit is extensive, with front, side and curtain airbags plus the automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning and speed assist that you might expect on a passenger car. It hasn’t been crash-tested by Euro NCAP, though.

A mesh bulkhead is standard to protect you from any flying goods in the load area, and one unique innovation is the ‘toot’ button on the steering wheel - which uses a single horn, rather than the blaring double horn produced from the steering wheel centre, to warn pedestrians or cyclists without blasting them.

All models also get an alarm and an immobiliser, which is nice - and a physical key is used for the ignition, so there’s less worry about potential relay theft.

Ineos vehicles get a five-year, unlimited mileage warranty in the UK, which is very generous. The BMW engines it uses are all well-proven in other vehicles, though they’re not especially common in a commercial setting. Sales are too minimal to know of any persistent problems, but we haven’t heard of any, nor have there been any safety recalls.