fbpx
New LCV review

Ineos Grenadier Commercial test drive

The Commercial version of the Ineos Grenadier showcases this unique 4x4 in a much better light than the passenger version.

Summary

The Commercial version of the Ineos Grenadier showcases this unique 4x4 in a much better light than the passenger version.

Review overview

Overall rating
8

Summary

The Commercial version of the Ineos Grenadier showcases this unique 4x4 in a much better light than the passenger version.

Make and model: Ineos Grenadier Commercial
Description: Large 4×4, petrol or diesel
Pricing: £51,931 + VAT (plus options)

Ineos says: “The idea behind the Grenadier is to develop an uncompromising, no frills, no fuss 4X4 that provides the best-in-class off-road capability, durability and utility.”

We say: The Commercial version of the Ineos Grenadier showcases this unique 4×4 in a much better light than the passenger version.

Introduction

This is the Ineos Grenadier Commercial, a two-seat workhorse version of the large SUV launched in 2023 by Ineos Automotive – the new car company created by UK businessman and investor, Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

Being a start-up company, Ineos has staged the roll-out of the Grenadier family to manage resources against demand. As a result, the passenger versions were launched first back in 2023 and the commercial versions are only now reaching UK customers.

In many ways, this feels like the version of the Grenadier that it was always meant to be. With the best will in the world, the passenger wagon is not the easiest or most comfortable family SUV to live with, but that’s where the initial demand was when Ratcliffe announced his plans for a new car to replace the old Land Rover Defender. Probably not surprising, since most Defenders seemed to live in London…

Who is this vehicle aimed at?

Unlike the passenger version, the Ineos Grenadier Commercial is clearly aimed at working customers. There are only two seats, with the rear bench removed and converted to additional cargo space. There are also a multitude of mounting and fixing points to customise the vehicle for whatever your job needs may be. In fact, it’s almost a baby Unimog (Mercedes-Benz’s legendary multi-purpose heavy-duty off-road vehicle).

As the commercial version, customers can reclaim VAT and receive a lower benefit-in-kind tax rate on this version compared to the previous – and fairly similar – two-seat Utility Wagon version.

Who won’t like it?

If your needs are pretty mainstream, the Grenadier Commercial’s impressive flexibility is unlikely to be worth the money. The Land Rover Defender Hard Top is likely to be more comfortable for a similar price, albeit without the customisation potential or sheer ruggedness of the Grenadier.

What do you get for your money?

The Grenadier Commercial is based on the passenger wagon, so it’s a large 4×4 with a separate body and chassis. You have a choice of a 3.0-litre petrol engine or a 3.0-litre diesel engine, both supplied by BMW and both hooked up to an eight-speed automatic gearbox. Ineos expects the diesel engine to outsell the petrol engine three-to-one in commercial models, whereas it’s a much more even split in passenger models. Pricing is the same for both engines, starting at approximately £52K + VAT.

It’s probably best to think of the Grenadier Commerical as a starting point for whatever you need, rather than an end point. The vehicle is designed for maximum flexibility, so you can modify it in almost any manner you like to suit your needs. Ineos proudly claims that every component has been sourced from the world’s finest automotive suppliers to ensure the highest quality and best performance in any situation.

One crucial aspect of the Grenadier’s philosophy is that it has been designed to be easy to maintain and repair by customers, rather than having to take the car into an approved workshop for minor problems. Most of the internal switches can be individually removed and replaced, rather than having to replace half a dashboard for one broken switch. The front and rear bumpers are designed in five separate sections so that if you damage one corner, you can just replace that bit rather than having to send the car off to a body shop for a full bumper replacement – saving both time and money.

Ineos clearly has faith its its new workhorse, as it backs the Grenadier Commercial with a five-year/100,000-mile warranty. By comparison, Land Rover offers three years/unlimited miles on the Defender.

What can you get in it?

The Grenadier Commercial has a cargo volume of 2,088 litres (or just under 2.1m3 if you prefer). That’s very similar to the Land Rover Defender 110 Hard Top (2,055 litres), but obviously less than even a small van, so if your primary goal is loading large objects then a van will trump a 4×4 any day.

Compared to the Land Rover, the Grenadier’s cargo bay is slightly shorter and slightly narrow, but slightly taller. In each direction, there’s only a couple of centimetres in it. The cargo bay is also full of useful tie-down points to keep your load secure, and mounting points for installing equipment. It will (just about) swallow two Euro pallets.

The maximum payload is 796kg for the diesel, which is basically the same as the Defender’s 800kg. However, if you choose the petrol Grenadier then this increases to 871kg, providing almost an extra adult male’s passenger weight of additional carrying capacity.

The Grenadier’s versatility goes beyond normal load-carrying, however. The roof can take 150kg of weight (only 100kg for the Defender) as part of that overall payload if needed, while there are also mounting points on all four doors and rear three-quarter panels for additional equipment. The level of in-built flexibility is simply unlike anything else on sale today.

As with many vehicles, towing capacity is limited to the legal maximum of 3,500kg. That doesn’t tell the whole story, however. Maximum gross train weight (GTW) is a class-leading 7,000kg, which means that the Grenadier can be loaded up to its maximum payload and still tow a 3,500kg trailer. The Defender can do much the same, but most 4×4 dual-cab pick-ups can’t – you have to choose between vehicle load or trailer load.

What’s the Ineos Grenadier like inside?

From the start, Ineos was adamant that the Grenadier had to be capable of almost any work duties under any conditions. That’s reflected in how the cabin has been designed, and you won’t find another vehicle like it. Although the Grenadier has often been described as the successor to the original Land Rover Defender, it’s much better designed for all-purpose operation and customisation.

The cabin is designed to be hosed down from top to bottom – including the dashboard, which would make any owner gulp after they’ve just spent £60K on their new Grenadier. There’s a multitude of buttons for pretty much every task you can think of, but they’ve all been designed with proper water drainage. Still not sure I’d try it with my own vehicle, though…

The buttons and switches are also designed to be able to be used with gloves on, again reflecting the idea that the Grenadier will be used in all conditions. This is the 21st century, so there is a central touchscreen if you like stabbing at a screen with your fingertips, but the screen can also be controlled by a control wheel (with your gloves on) in the centre console if you prefer.

There is also plenty of provision for aftermarket switches to sit alongside the factory controls, so you can add lighting pods, winches and the like, and have a neatly integrated set of controls rather than an unsightly profusion of drilled holes and switches mounted in various inconvenient parts of the dashboard. Many of these switch panels are located in the ceiling, giving the cabin a feeling akin to an aeroplane cockpit (absolutely intentional, if you’re wondering).

The cargo bay can be accessed from the rear doors, which still open like the passenger version although the windows have been replaced by aluminium panels and the window switches have been deactivated. The seat mounting points have also been removed as part of the commercial vehicle specification, so there’s no way to fit additional seats in the rear afterwards. This is required as part of the LCV homologation process to allow customers to reclaim VAT and receive lower benefit-in-kind tax rates.

Most cargo access is likely to be from the rear. The rear barn doors are arranged 70:30, with a spare wheel mount on the larger door and ladder mounting points on the smaller door. They both swing out wide to allow easy access to the cargo bay. Having the smaller door on the left-hand side makes it easy to open and access the cargo bay even while the Grenadier is hooked up to a trailer.

What’s under the bonnet?

The Ineos Grenadier Commerical offers you a choice of two engines, both 3.0-litre six-cylinder models sourced from BMW. You can have either a diesel or a petrol, and Ineos expects that the diesel will outsell the petrol by about three-to-one on commercial models (it’s closer to 50:50 on passenger versions).

Both engines are hooked up to an eight-speed automatic transmission and drive all four wheels. You can switch between two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive on the fly, as well as high and low range in four-wheel drive mode.

The petrol engine produces more power (286hp vs 249hp) but the diesel offers more torque (550Nm vs 450Nm). So the petrol version will sprint from 0-60mph a second quicker, but the diesel will maintain its performance much better with a full load.

Neither is stunningly fuel-efficient. The petrol version claims 19-20mpg on the official government lab tests, while the diesel claims 23-26mpg. At least a 90-litre fuel tank will ensure you don’t have to keep filling up too often.

Given the intended use cases for the Grenadier Commercial, the diesel engine seems to be the obvious choice here. Unless you genuinely need an extra 75kg of payload, or you have an entire fleet of petrol vehicles and you don’t want a mix of petrol and diesel vehicles, or you just have an aversion to diesels, it’s tough to make an argument for the petrol version.

What’s the Ineos Grenadier like to drive?

Much of the attention in the Grenadier’s initial press reviews has revolved around its steering, which is not like most modern cars. It uses a recirculating ball set-up rather than a conventional rack-and-pinion system. What this means in practice is that the wheel does not self-centre coming out of a corner, so you have to both turn into a corner and then turn out again rather than letting the car straighten itself out.

For some reason, various motoring journalists managed to get somewhat worked up about this, but the reality is that you adjust to it as soon as you exit your first corner then largely forget about it. The reason it’s used in the Grenadier is that it works better in off-road situations where you want very precise control over which direction the front wheels are pointing at all times.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s look at the rest of the vehicle. The driving position is quite upright, and you’re already sitting up quite high, so you get a great view of the road ahead and tower over most other vehicles around you. The mirrors are good, but over-the-shoulder visibility is obviously minimal, given that there are no rear-side windows. Likewise, the view out of the central rear-view mirror is limited by the rear barn doors and (on our test car, at least) the spare wheel.

The vehicles we drove on each of three courses (on-road, off-road and towing) were all diesel-powered, so we can’t report on how the petrol version drives. But the diesel is an excellent unit so, as mentioned above, it’s hard to see why you’d choose the petrol engine unless you have very specific reasons. Torque on the diesel is strong, so it pulls happily away from rest even with a 2.5-tonne trailer attached.

Ride comfort on-road is generally pretty reasonable, although we only spent about half an hour on the test route so can’t advise on comfort for longer duration trips. The seats are firm but supportive, and the noise levels are reasonably hushed – although not as quiet as your average passenger SUV. We didn’t try the Grenadier on motorways or even 60mph A-roads, but noise levels from wind and tyres are likely to pick up significantly as speed increases. It’s ultimately a big, brick-shaped vehicle that runs on all-season tyres, so it’s not going to be whisper-quiet.

When the terrain turns from tarmac to terrible, the Grenadier comes into its own. Our off-road course was fairly short and not too challenging, with only a few small hills and not too much mud, but the Grenadier handled everything with no problems at all. It simply felt unstoppable in any weather.

Verdict

The Ineos Grenadier Commercial is unlike pretty much any other light commercial vehicle on sale in the UK. Yes, you can buy other 4×4 wagons – we’ve made repeated comparisons with the Land Rover Defender Hard Top, but there’ll presumably a commercial version of the new Toyota Land Cruiser along shortly as well – but nothing has quite the opportunity for personalisation as the Grenadier.

So, how do you arrive at a verdict for a car that’s part old-school Defender, part modern 4×4 and part Unimog?

For most buyer needs, the Grenadier is either insufficient or overkill. It doesn’t have the load space or fuel efficiency of a large 4×4 van, while its off-roading capabilities and heavy-duty nature will far exceed most needs for towing and light off-roading.

But for those customers who have specialist needs, the Grenadier is a particularly fine tool. It can push further off-road than the latest Land Rover Defender models, while carrying and/or towing more kit along the way. It has been designed from the ground up for substantial customisation, allowing customers to create their own bespoke work vehicles with no compromises. It has been designed for easy maintenance and repairs, going against the grain of integrated systems that can’t be individually replaced.

If you want a fun 4×4 that doubles as a work vehicle, this isn’t it. However, if you need a work vehicle that can operate in conditions that will leave almost any other 4×4 wagon or dual-cab pick-up floundering, you’re unlikely to find a vehicle more capable than the Ineos Grenadier Commercial.

Similar vehicles

Land Rover Defender Hard Top | Toyota Land Cruiser J70 (not available in the UK)

Key specifications

Model tested: Ineos Grenadier Commercial
Price (as tested): £57,514 + VAT
Engine: 3.0-litre diesel
Gearbox: 
Eight-speed automatic
Warranty: Five years/100,000 miles

Power: 245 hp
Torque: 550 Nm
Max. payload: 799 kg
Max. load volume: 2.1 m3
Dimensions: 4.9m(l), 1.93m (w), 2.1m (h)

Top speed: 99 mph
0-60 mph: 9.8 seconds
Fuel economy (combined): 23-27 mpg
CO2 emissions: 276-319 g/km
Euro NCAP safety rating: Not tested

Buy an Ineos Grenadier

If you’re looking to buy a new or used Ineos Grenadier Commercial, The Van Expert’s partners can help you find the right vehicle.

Motors 600x300

Find your next used van with Motors. Find out more

Auto Trader logo 600x300

Find your next new or used van with Auto Trader. Find out more

Carwow logo 600x300

Find your next new or used van with Carwow. Find out more

Lease an Ineos Grenadier

If you’re looking to lease a new Ineos Grenadier, The Van Expert’s partners can help you find a competitive deal.

Contract hire deals from Leasing.com. Find out more

Rivervale Leasing logo 2023

Contract hire deals from Rivervale Leasing. Find out more

Vanparison logo 600x300

Contract hire deals from Vanparison Leasing. Find out more

Stuart Masson
Stuart Massonhttps://www.thecarexpert.co.uk
Stuart founded sister site The Car Expert in 2011. Originally from Australia, Stuart has had a passion for the car industry for over thirty years. He now provides overall direction for our four automotive titles.
The Commercial version of the Ineos Grenadier showcases this unique 4x4 in a much better light than the passenger version.Ineos Grenadier Commercial test drive