Harry Metcalfe Isn’t Sold on the Ineos Grenadier

We expected famed car journalist-turned-YouTuber Harry Metcalfe to come sailing into his 2023 Ineos Grenadier review to tell us how wonderful the Land Rover Defender–aping SUV is before blustering on about adding one to his fleet. Our expectations were wrong. Instead, Metcalfe delivered two 20-ish minute video reviews on the BMW-powered utility machine, one on his Harry’s Garage YouTube channel, the other on Harry’s Farm. In both, the Grenadier ends up leaving him flat.

On the road, the essential gripe is that it is too big, too agricultural, too ponderous, and not well-resolved enough for a $73,000 vehicle, especially compared to the likes of the new Land Rover Defender. We’re not sure we agree with Metcalfe on the Defender, but it’s easy to see where the Grenadier might fall short. But it is, after all, designed to be a rugged, dependable, utilitarian machine to take over the mantle of the now-dead original Land Rover Defender. So we should expect it to be ponderous on the road but well resolved around the farm.

But that’s the trouble. To Harry’s use, anyway, it isn’t. Whereas the new Defender is point-and-shoot, allowing you to aim it at an obstacle and have the rig figure out how to get over it, the Grenadier requires more input, and the diff locks are manual and not as quick or intuitive as Metcalfe would like.

And, without the lockers, the 6,000-pound Grenadier fails to conquer a fairly simple grassy climb, even with its thrumming BMW-sourced turbodiesel. We can’t wait to see other reviews of this machine, but it’s interesting to get Harry’s take.

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