Hello all,
I'm Christian and since May 2023 I own a Grenadier Station Wagon. So I'm among the first in Germany owning this car.
To tell my experience with the Grenadier so far: driving the car is great, the way Ineos Automotive treats me not.
More to come ...
Christian
Here is my story - quite late, because I wasn‘t sure if anyone is interested to hear it in the first place. Definetly INEOS Automotive (IA) is not interested but maybe some potential buyers of the Grenadier or the Quartermaster.
I received my Grenadier in May 2023. I'm under the first owners of the Grenadier in Germany, that's what my first dealer (100 km away from my home town) told me. I say first delaer since the company got insolvent already.
My Grenadier was from the beginning on defective: the air conditioning (A/C) didn't work which means it was not able to cool down the air. The dealer first just filled up the coolant liquid which helped for about three month. I brought back the car to the dealer the second time who now said he replaced a leaking pipe. As for the first repair, I didn't get any compensation which is against the german law (BGB §439). I of course called IA dialing the 0800 number. But the woman on the other side had no clue of anything – plain incompetence and unwilling to connect me to her team leader. She just said that IA will not pay for my expenses due to contractual agreement. After some month I received a mail that my dealer is out of business and I had to select another dealer (more than 140 km away from my home town). I didn‘t took long and the A/C was again no longer working. So I brought the car to the new dealer. The customer agent told me that a leaking pipe had to be replaced. This time, I at least got the rental car for free - but of course I had to pay for the petrol of the rental car. Unfortuantely, the repair wasn't successful since after some month, guess what happened? The A/C was not able to coll down the air! Now another leaking pipe had to be replaced. This time of course without any compensation. By the way: the car had an additional problem. The lock of the spare wheel cover was defective and I couldn't open it. The dealer told me that IA claimed that it was my fault - in other words IA told me that I'm too stupid to insert the key correctly into the lock and open it. This is what IA thinks about it's customers: to stupid to operate a simple lock!
In 2024 I participated in an IA survey regarding customer satisfaction. The last point in this survey was the question whether or not I wanted to be contacted by IA which I answered with "yes". Nothing happend. In August this year I receved a mail from IA in which the IA CEO said that since I'm among hte first Grendier owners, IA wanted to know my experiences / opinion. A telephone call was aranged and a woman from IA called me. I told her my story and she said that it was not OK how I was treated and she will escalate the topic which could go maybe as high as to the IA CEO. And she also told me that I will receive a mail tomorrow signed by her name. This „tomorrow“ was 15-Aug-2025 and OF COURSE NOTHING HAPPENED! No mail no call back – nothing! I understand this as "we don't care about your claim".
I have lost the convidence in this company. With this behaviour towards their customers, IA will either go out of business soon or will be sold to a big car manufacturer.
Someone said that we as the first buyers are kind of IA embassdors. How do you think I‘m talking about IA to potential customers?
Two hunting commrades who where very interested in the Grenadier told me that they won't buy the car not because I had problems with it but due to the way IA treated me.
And some weeks ago, I stopped at a red traffic light. An old Mitsubishi Pajero stopped next to me and the window was opened. The driver said that he is interested in this car and he wanted to know my opinion about it. I was silent for two seconds and then said "the car is OK, but the compnay is not. They don't care about their customers. If you have problems, they leave you alone". The traffic light switched to green and we drove our ways. I guess this guy will also not buy this car.
I'm for sure not the only one who had such negative experiences of how IA treats their customers, just check YouTube. Could this be one major reason why it is more likely to see a new Toyota Land Cruiser on the streets than a Grenadier? I was on vacation in August driving more 1500 km in Germay. My wife said that she saw that a lot of people were staring at the car when we passed them. During the vacation time we saw some Mercedes G-Klasse, some JLR cars and even two new Toyota Land Cruiser BUT NO GRENADIER!
If IA treats their customers like me, they will loose more potential customers and right so.
Sir Jim Ratcliff had a great idea by bringing this car on the streets. For me the Grenadier not only looks great and makes a lot of fun driving it. For me it is the real successor of the Defender (I had a Defender 90 which I sold for the Greandier). But I think that IA will disappear sooner or later due to the incompetence of the customer claims department who has absolutely no idea how to treat customers in a way that those customers will talk positively about the car and the company.
