BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 151
TRIVIAL PURSUITS
By Ben Oliver
Ben Oliver writes about cars and
the car industry for newspapers
and magazines around the world:
his favourite assignment saw
him drive a standard Mini to the
highest place a car can go, the
18,000ft Khardung La pass in
the Indian Himalayas. Ben also
writes about technology, travel and
watches and runs a business in the
昀椀lm industry.
I
t is hard to imagine a more
Boisdale car than the Ineos
Grenadier. It was conceived
in and named after another
Belgravia drinking hole, in this case
the Grenadier pub owned by Sir
Jim Ratcliffe: founder of the Ineos
chemicals group, part-owner of
Manchester United and occasionally
Britain’s richest man. The pub
also lends its name to the Ineos
Grenadiers, Sir Jim’s all-conquering
professional cycling team.
Like Boisdale and much of its
clientele, the Ineos Grenadier revels in
wilful idiosyncrasy and iconoclasm,
rejecting the engineering orthodoxy
which has sucked the life and
character out of other modern cars.
the modern reinterpretation of the
Defender it has since launched. Irked,
Sir Jim responded as only a billionaire
can, deciding to establish his own
carmaker after few pints in his own
pub.
Land Rover then objected to the
Grenadier’s design, claiming in court
that it was too close to that of the
outgoing Defender. The litigation
which ensued (and the pandemic)
meant that the Grenadier wasn’t
launched until early 2024. The
bankruptcy of a major supplier then
forced Ineos to suspend production
for months, and the uncertainty over
tariffs has disrupted its introduction
to the US, easily its biggest market.
Put all this together and the car 昀椀rst
conceived a decade ago is only now
hitting its stride.
“The Grenadier feels
remarkably well-made, as if
its maker has been doing this
for years. And that’s because it
has.”
Despite his other responsibilities,
Sir Jim was very hands-on during
its design and testing, and he has
made the car he always wanted. The
question is, does anyone else? The
Grenadier has a deliberately archaic
chassis, suspension and steering
design: more capable and largely
unbreakable off-road, but leaving it
with somewhat agricultural manners
on-road, where it will spend the vast
majority of its time.
And, like Boisdale, it is rural by
inclination, if largely urban by
location: it was designed to be bought
and used by farmers, adventurers,
昀椀eld sports enthusiasts and the horsey
set, even if most will be con昀椀ned to
town.
The story of the Grenadier’s genesis is
as unusual as its design. Sir Jim loved
the original Land Rover Defender,
and, when its maker announced
that it would kill it off in 2015, he
tried to buy the tooling to keep it in
production. Land Rover refused, not
wishing to distract attention from
Traditionalists will rejoice in its
resolutely unelectri昀椀ed drivetrain:
the Grenadier uses a 3.0-litre BMW
straight six in either petrol or diesel,
driving all four wheels (of course)
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BOISDALELIFE.COM
ISSUE 24
