Thoughts and Musings on the Ineos Grenadier

[russianfrog]

I have three criteria I need Grenadier to clear out, before any leap of faith:

- The price (I expect less than 50,000€ for a properly equipped truck)

- The fuel consumption (less than 10l per 100km)

- The maintenance network (BMW?) and the maintenance cost (not more than the current Defender).

After, I like the idea of creating a new car answering the challenge of a "modern Defender" (which the new one isn't). Combining British entrepreneurship spirit with Austrian engineers and French assembly team seems like an interesting mix. 

[deep]

"- The fuel consumption (less than 10l per 100km)"?  That's near enough 28 miles per gallon.  Considering what other parachute-shaped vehicles of a similar size can get, it seems likely that the diesel version will be able to achieve that but maybe not at high speed or trucking a load up a hill?  It will be interesting to see what real world economy is like.

[Snagger]

That’d be better than most modern 4wd vehicles, which seem to be heading towards pre 1970s fuel consumption.

[deep]

It's the conflict between perceiving a need to travel swiftly, even in a very large car, and the desire to be able to boast about fantastic fuel economy.  I see it quite dramatically with my Freelander 2 - cruising at modest speeds on a flat road, it will indeed show economy in the mid thirties, despite having a bigger engine than a Grenadier.  Accelerating, even slowly, to that speed puts economy below thirty.  Hills, a big trailer, town work and some enthusiasm pushes it under 20!  I think diesels are less variable but most, if not all, big new 4WDs are capable of horrendous fuel use, simply because of that need for speed.  I seriously think a real Defender replacement should be speed-limited to 85 m.p.h., putting less compromise on tyres, suspension and engine power characteristics and allowing better economy.  We'll see how Ineos juggle all this soon enough!

[Mo Murphy]

Buy a Grenadier, support an enemy the French economy.

With Macron trying to stick sharp sticks in the side of the UK at every opportunity to hide his dithering with vaccination, I'd rather buy Chinese !

Mo

[jeremy996]

3 hours ago, Mo Murphy said:

Buy a Grenadier, support an enemy the French economy.

With Macron trying to stick sharp sticks in the side of the UK at every opportunity to hide his dithering with vaccination, I'd rather buy Chinese !

Mo

Politicians seriously overstate their importance; this posturing is basically an irrelevance to commerce and just playing to the gallery.

INEOS Automotive Limited is a UK registered company https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11201576/filing-history so any profit will probably be landed and taxed here. All vehicle building is international so buying British is virtually impossible; even Morgan is owned by an Italian venture capital company using BMW engines.

 

[Bowie69]

3 hours ago, Mo Murphy said:

Buy a Grenadier, support an enemy the French economy.

With Macron trying to stick sharp sticks in the side of the UK at every opportunity to hide his dithering with vaccination, I'd rather buy Chinese !

Mo

At this rate, it will be Marine Le Pen come next year's elections!

Macron is still stinging from Brexit, and whatever side of that particular divide you are one, it is a poor look for a supposed statesman.

All that said, I'd probably buy a brand new Niva, mostly because I am very unlikely to be able to afford a brand new Grenadier any time soon.

[Peaklander]

43 minutes ago, jeremy996 said:

INEOS Automotive Limited is a UK registered company...so any profit will probably be landed and taxed here.

It isn't as simple as that. The benefits of production aren't just the profit at the final selling price. The final costs themselves are the sum of all the individual activities that all generate profit (and loss) and many of those are in the production facility and parts suppliers. All the wages are costs yes but some of those are spent in the local economy and taxed there too (and generate profit too). There's also all the companies that service and supply a factory, from the security, food, office supplies, PPE, racking, fork trucks, HVAC, lighting ... it goes on and on. Everyone benefits from the spending of monies that 'look' like costs but are their own cash streams.

[jeremy996]

20 hours ago, Peaklander said:

It isn't as simple as that.

Very true. I'm an accountant who used to work for a multi-national insurance broker. The legal jurisdiction of the ultimate holding company can also be a red herring.  I can show you some transfer pricing tricks that would enable you to record profit where the tax rate is most beneficial to the ultimate owner, (famous examples being Google, Starbucks and Amazon). Government and politicians could plug those tax leakages, but the will is not there. Grilling over tax avoidance processes Academic paper on tax avoidance by large multi-nationals in EU

For the UK, the best you can hope for is some sort of connection by licencing, marketing and a tie to a legal jurisdiction. All large scale manufacturing has a large hinterland with many spin-offs, and the actual "value" can be much greater than the simple values ascribed by the accounting and tax processes. Manufacturing margins can be very thin, with the large car builders making more money through finance deals than actually shifting metal. If Grenadier is able to make any surplus in the early years, I will be astonished but delighted. No other manufacturer seems to believe there is enough of a market for a 4x4 work truck without luxury SUV credentials.

[deep]

6 hours ago, jeremy996 said:

No other manufacturer seems to believe there is enough of a market for a 4x4 work truck without luxury SUV credentials.

Luxury "SUV" credentials?  If you see how ultra-trendy the classic/Defender Land Rovers have become, you might find the Grenadier walks into a huge market all of its own.  It will, surely, be luxurious enough too, in that it won't be a cramped, noisy, bone-jarring old thing.

Edited March 17, 2021 by deep

[Mo Murphy]

11 minutes ago, deep said:

Luxury "SUV" credentials?  If you see how ultra-trendy the classic/Defender Land Rovers have become, you might find the Grenadier walks into a huge market all of its own.  It will, surely, be luxurious enough too, in that it won't be a cramped, noisy, bone-jarring old thing.

Like you've just bought 😉

Perhaps we're just anachronisms 😁

I must confess I do have a USB socket, sorry.

Mo

 

[deep]

I just bought a Freelander 2 and a Series 3.  Put a label on that...  

[Mo Murphy]

😬

[reb78]

On 3/17/2021 at 5:29 PM, Mo Murphy said:

Like you've just bought 😉

Perhaps we're just anachronisms 😁

I must confess I do have a USB socket, sorry.

Mo

 

You even have soundproofing now too. That 90 will be quite refined soon. 

[FridgeFreezer]

On 3/17/2021 at 5:13 PM, deep said:

Luxury "SUV" credentials?  If you see how ultra-trendy the classic/Defender Land Rovers have become, you might find the Grenadier walks into a huge market all of its own.

Not a big market though - sure you see pimped out Defenders and they fetch good money but you see 50x as many Range Rovers / Discoveries etc. on the road. I'm sure the only reason Mercedes are still selling the G-Wagens is they can recycle an old design, stuff it full of leather and charge 100k for it. Presumably they have the luxury of having enough space in production to keep doing it, unlike JLR.

[Waldorf]

1 hour ago, FridgeFreezer said:

 I'm sure the only reason Mercedes are still selling the G-Wagens is they can recycle an old design, stuff it full of leather and charge 100k for it. Presumably they have the luxury of having enough space in production to keep doing it, unlike JLR.

That's not quite correct. The new G-wagon (released in 2018) is an all new design, made to look like an old design. Mercedes had engineers design the doors in such a way that closing the doors sounds exactly like it did on the old G-wagon. The orginal G-wagon (the W461 as they call it) is still in production as the 'Professional'. It's not available in all markets, and it doesn't have any of the bling. Old and new are both produced in Austria.

[geoffbeaumont]

On 3/15/2021 at 7:01 PM, deep said:

It's the conflict between perceiving a need to travel swiftly, even in a very large car, and the desire to be able to boast about fantastic fuel economy.

More emissions targets, and to a lesser extent buyers comparing potential purchases on official fuel consumption figures. The vehicle has to be frugal within the limits of the testing regime, even if that compromises consumption outside that envelope. And the demand for high performance means they have to work hard once taken outside it.

It's particularly obvious with the tiny heavily boosted engines, but even big engines are affected.

[Snagger]

Yep.  The higher the fuel consumption, the higher the emissions, the higher the road tax and fuel costs for the customer and the higher the corporation taxes for the manufacturer.  It’s not boasting but plain old boring economics.  But why customers want big off readers that can be driven like sports cars I don’t know.

[deep]

14 hours ago, Snagger said:

But why customers want big off readers that can be driven like sports cars I don’t know.

Image.  Lots of people want to swan around at high speed, in comfort, but many also want to portray a swashbuckling image of capability and adventure without giving that up.

[Mo Murphy]

8 hours ago, deep said:

Image.  Lots of people want to swan around at high speed, in comfort, but many also want to portray a swashbuckling image of capability and adventure without giving that up.

It's not what you do, its what you appear to do 🤣

Bless the little loves !

Mo

[FridgeFreezer]

A full fat Range Rover is a wonderful machine though - swanning about in comfort, capable of immense mile-munching on a long run and yet incredibly capable off-road, don't see what's so terrible about liking that even if most buyers don't use it to its full potential... most car buyers don't use the full range of the speedo so why have the capability?

[jeremy996]

If the final result can swan along at legal speeds for a long life I shall be well content. If I want to feel like I am going fast, I have a little 2 seater sports car that feels heroic at 70mph!

I appreciate that I am a tiny niche in the wide world of new 4x4 vehicle buyers and that 1 new vehicle every 30 years will not sustain mass production!

[deep]

11 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

A full fat Range Rover is a wonderful machine though - swanning about in comfort, capable of immense mile-munching on a long run and yet incredibly capable off-road, don't see what's so terrible about liking that even if most buyers don't use it to its full potential... most car buyers don't use the full range of the speedo so why have the capability?

I don't think you will find too many people on this site that think it is terrible to like that!  I certainly liked my Range Rovers and have recently found that my considerably more powerful Freelander 2 gives more of that same feeling, which I still like.  However, in reality, the overall effect is terrible.  The multiplication of that level of indulgence times the sheer number of people enjoying it is tearing this place apart, sadly.

[landroversforever]

1 hour ago, deep said:

However, in reality, the overall effect is terrible.  The multiplication of that level of indulgence times the sheer number of people enjoying it is tearing this place apart, sadly.

Almost worse in my eyes is the incessant drive towards stupid crossover type cars that have just ballooned in weight and size and don't do anything different to a much lighter, smaller, saloon car.

[Bowie69]

Agreed, the amount of unnecessary on the roads at the moment is just ridiculous. 

The car has become an oversized giant mass of metal and plastic formed into a ridiculous posing pouch. 

For the record I have wintered since November in a 1954 moggy traveller, while refurbing my 1991 audi's underside.