Is the Ineos Grenadier the worst car I’ve ever driven?

The Ineos Grenadier is exactly what would happen if I too was allowed to design a car after a few pints and was so rich that no one was game to tell me it was a bad idea.

Stephen Corby

3 min read

11:24AMAugust 30, 2024

The Weekend Australian Magazine

This vehicle was famously imagineered by billionaire Brit Jim Ratcliffe.

Recently someone delivered a very large, sharp-looking shovel to my house and asked me to test it for a week. I pointed out that I would have little use for it because my nickname has long been “Blister” – I only appear once the physical work has been done – and that I would only utilise it for basic tasks like eating Coco Pops or flattening schnitzels.

They left this metaphorical shovel – an intensely focused off-road machine called the Ineos Grenadier, which looks like it was made out of Meccano pieces and feels like it was constructed by someone who should have stuck to Duplo – with me anyway, and said they hoped I would find the time to go and dig some holes with it in a forest somewhere.

So I tried to use it for driving around town, a job that this vehicle is as well qualified for as Tim Minchin is to lead the Liberal Party. Or the Catholic Church. For a start, it has hugely chunky off-roading tyres, which means it transmits every bump and fissure in the road directly to your spine, which is almost as annoying as the steering, which does not self-centre (think of the steering in a dodgem car) because you don’t want that when you’re trying to climb the Devils Marbles or some other topographical torture test.

The result is that once you’ve turned the big, heavy wheel to the right, you then have to wrestle it back to the left, and that’s just to keep it in a straight line. Roundabouts make your arms feel like you’re doing that weird rope-wobbling thing that CrossFit fanatics go in for. I hated it. A lot.

Ineos did tell me that some city slickers are buying these vehicles “for aesthetic reasons”. These people need new eyes.

I also hated getting into this giant climbing gym on wheels, but not as much as my children did (after clambering up for the first time, just 30 seconds into her review, my daughter declared: “You know, you’ve had a lot of cars, but this is the worst one ever”), because it is at least 3m off the ground and there are no sidesteps to help. And once you’re in, you have to adjust your seat to Baby’s High Chair level so you can see where you’re going, which is best described as nowhere fast.

Apparently you can buy side steps and lots of other stuff as aftermarket extras, but after you’d paid north of $100,000 and realised how badly built and badly designed the whole thing is (there’s no speedometer in front of the driver, for instance, despite there being an obvious space for one) you’d be in too filthy a mood to do so.

On our third day together the passenger door stopped working. It simply wouldn’t latch, so I couldn’t shut it, let alone lock it. This caused me to kick things, as did the complete failure of Apple CarPlay, and the fact that the heater didn’t seem to work (although it did make annoying whirring sounds). Uniquely, the hot air that does come out seems only to create condensation on the outside of the windscreen, which means you’re going to be the idiot driving along in a tunnel with his wipers on. On the plus side, the 3.0-litre six-cylinder petrol engine borrowed from BMW is quite lovely, although it feels like a diamond in a dung pile.

The Grenadier looks like it was made out of Meccano pieces and feels like it was constructed by someone who should have stuck to Duplo.

Now look, as I pointed out, clearly this Ineos is not designed for someone like me – it’s for the many customers who’ve bought one and then immediately set out to traverse the Simpson Desert or bash the Birdsville Track. I imagine it must be good at that, though you’d have to be a masochist to enjoy it.

But Ineos did tell me that some city slickers are buying these vehicles “for aesthetic reasons”. These people need new eyes, although I’ll admit that before I fell in hate with the thing, I did love all the buttons and switches above your head, which make it feel like you’re piloting a helicopter.

Mind you, knowing what I do now, if I saw a chopper with Ineos on the side I’d run in the other direction.

This vehicle was famously imagineered by billionaire Brit Jim Ratcliffe, boss of the Ineos chemicals group, who was a fan of the original Land Rover Defender – as rugged a machine as ever there’s been – and wanted to create his own, so he came up with the design on the back of a beer coaster in a London pub called The Grenadier.

I’ll admit that before I fell in hate with the thing, I did love all the buttons and switches above your head.

I always thought it sounded like a great story, but now I’ve driven one I think it actually represents what would happen if I was allowed to design a car after a few pints and I was so rich that no one was game to tell me it was a bad idea (it’s worth nothing that I am to drawing what a pig is to painting – the people behind Pictionary have banned me from playing).

What this week with the Ineos Grenadier has taught me, however, is that my daughter is much more efficient, and faster, at assessing vehicles than me. I can’t wait until she can drive.