Ineos Grenadier - long-term review

There’s a Spitfire flying over Dunsfold. Of course there is, it’s that sort of place. It’s the end of a sunny, warm day of filming and it’s lazily buzzing and looping above, sounding bloody magnificent. I’ve got picnic chairs with me (long story), so I grab one and turn the Grenadier’s roof rack into a viewing platform. It’s wonderful. Majestic and yet soporific.

Roof rack, rather than the bars it arrived with, you’ll note. Typically, the chunky £452 Rhino Rack bars didn’t work with my own attachments, so I’ve switched them for the £2,043 full length roof. Yeah, not cheap. And it does mean that I can’t open the Fieldmaster’s standard fit roof lights. No matter, the Grenadier now has a second storey. And it’s large enough to double as a landing pad.

I know it seems trite and superfluous, but this is the sort of mini-adventure that maxi-adventure vehicles lend themselves too. You can’t sit on the roof of a supercar. A Range Rover doesn’t come with a handy ladder. Yes, you can have one on a new Defender, but it’s rubbish – tries hard to be sleek and well-integrated, ends up trapping fingers and feeling flimsy. Not the Grenadier’s. My colleagues came up and joined me (the 90kg weight limit only applies when you’re moving, right?), we clinked water bottles and nodded appreciatively at the lofty view of our surroundings.

As is the way of these things, having a capable car means you very quickly discover things to do with it. So I hitched up a trailer to take an old table tennis table to a new home. The roof deck was a far more fun way to help a nephew rescue a well flung frisbee from a garage roof than a stepladder. The flip down table in the boot door has already come in handy as a laptop station (even if I hadn’t envisaged the other door doubling as a drying rack for a sweaty race suit). And the flat bonnet made it very easy for the film team to sucker a drone rig on. Even if they then criticised the car itself for sluggish pull away and lazy handling.

They do have a point. The Grenadier corners with the same finesse and momentum as a hippo. It’s lumbering and heavy and does everything it can to dissuade you from a course of eagerness. The lag when pulling away is particularly annoying – and a safety issue when going for gaps into traffic. But it does ride well for a vehicle with solid axles (best with a good load on board), and it’s quiet for a car with so many protuberances. Well, it was until the roof went on. Luckily, it’s more low-pitched drone than squealing whistle. And for a car of this ilk, it’s not even that slow.

But it is deeply thirsty. I suspect you’ll be hearing more about that soon, when I’m back from a fully loaded 2,500-mile trip round France. My credit card is already wilting in anticipation. But the thing everyone talks about as being an issue, the recirculating ball steering, I’ve now got used to. I still don’t like it, still not convinced it’s the right solution, but I can see how it suits the car, and I’ve got used to the lack of self-centring to the extent that other cars now feel a bit odd. What hasn’t yet stopped irritating – and probably won’t – is the hopeless turning circle and the power steering’s inability to keep up the assistance when you’re hauling lock on and off quickly. That’s a workout I could do without.

But the truth is the Grenadier has got its feet under the table pretty quickly. It’s got a good heart, it feels super tough, less precious than a Defender. A car that would wear its battle scars proudly. Not that I want to give it any, you understand.