- Local time
- 10:39 AM
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2024
- Messages
- 9
- Reaction score
- 16
- Location
- Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Hi, prospective Grenadier buyer here.
I was finally able to get hands on with a Grenadier, and wow was I impressed. I knew it was heavy duty, but it even has king pin axles! (Warning for those not engineering nerds interested in minutia) I mean that's something that is found in class 6-8 trucks and hasn't been on US consumer pickups for decades as far as I'm aware. It is very clear that this thing was built to take thousands of miles of traveling across potholed unpaved roads (or Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, etc.) without blinking. It's also a reason why the turning radius is boat like (king pins are more robust than ball joints but more expensive to build and can limit turning radius), but it shows where the engineers' heads were at in the design phase: build a tank that will just go and go and go. Solid axles is one thing. Solid axles with king pins shows a whole different level of thinking. Yes, it's the details that make the difference to me.
So, this is clearly the 70 Series Land Cruiser (only other vehicle on sale new today for a consumer size 4x4 that I know of using king pins and with a similar boat like turning circle) or W461 G wagon for NA with a rubber floor, actual knobs and buttons, hard plastic seat backs, etc. that I have been waiting for. I could pretty much buy and drive instead of having to then reengineer whatever it is to fit my needs.
HOWEVER, my experience with Land Rover, which also makes a quite good 4x4 despite what some might say, is I'm tired of paying 400% markup on service and 300% markup on parts.
One of the other enormous appeals was that the Grenadier was supposed to be owner serviceable with a readily available workshop manual. In lots of reading and searching, that seems to be unclear at the moment.
The manual is supposedly due out Q1 2024 which would be in the next two weeks right?
Has anyone gotten any confirmation on this? It seems like in other threads there's been various replies from Ineos in other countries from "we'll see" to "keep waiting."
Has anyone in North America had any experience trying to get parts or service and the cost of service? This car should be a whistle while you work service experience. I crawled all over it, and I could do things in about half or a fourth of the time as on my Land Rover, but our friends in Europe and Australia are reporting shockingly high service and parts costs for simple things like an oil change (I could do in 15-30 minutes w/ $100 in parts here in the US), plastic door handle, spare wheel, etc.
Given that Ineos launched the product promising to be different, it's a bit off-putting if parts and service cost is going to make even Land Rover blush. Never mind the catastrophic impact this would have on insurance costs which are already up 20% this year.
I know it's very early days in North America, but anyone's experience would be helpful. Love the vehicle, just hoping for something that is ACTUALLY different from a Land Rover experience.
I was finally able to get hands on with a Grenadier, and wow was I impressed. I knew it was heavy duty, but it even has king pin axles! (Warning for those not engineering nerds interested in minutia) I mean that's something that is found in class 6-8 trucks and hasn't been on US consumer pickups for decades as far as I'm aware. It is very clear that this thing was built to take thousands of miles of traveling across potholed unpaved roads (or Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, etc.) without blinking. It's also a reason why the turning radius is boat like (king pins are more robust than ball joints but more expensive to build and can limit turning radius), but it shows where the engineers' heads were at in the design phase: build a tank that will just go and go and go. Solid axles is one thing. Solid axles with king pins shows a whole different level of thinking. Yes, it's the details that make the difference to me.
So, this is clearly the 70 Series Land Cruiser (only other vehicle on sale new today for a consumer size 4x4 that I know of using king pins and with a similar boat like turning circle) or W461 G wagon for NA with a rubber floor, actual knobs and buttons, hard plastic seat backs, etc. that I have been waiting for. I could pretty much buy and drive instead of having to then reengineer whatever it is to fit my needs.
HOWEVER, my experience with Land Rover, which also makes a quite good 4x4 despite what some might say, is I'm tired of paying 400% markup on service and 300% markup on parts.
One of the other enormous appeals was that the Grenadier was supposed to be owner serviceable with a readily available workshop manual. In lots of reading and searching, that seems to be unclear at the moment.
The manual is supposedly due out Q1 2024 which would be in the next two weeks right?
Has anyone gotten any confirmation on this? It seems like in other threads there's been various replies from Ineos in other countries from "we'll see" to "keep waiting."
Has anyone in North America had any experience trying to get parts or service and the cost of service? This car should be a whistle while you work service experience. I crawled all over it, and I could do things in about half or a fourth of the time as on my Land Rover, but our friends in Europe and Australia are reporting shockingly high service and parts costs for simple things like an oil change (I could do in 15-30 minutes w/ $100 in parts here in the US), plastic door handle, spare wheel, etc.
Given that Ineos launched the product promising to be different, it's a bit off-putting if parts and service cost is going to make even Land Rover blush. Never mind the catastrophic impact this would have on insurance costs which are already up 20% this year.
I know it's very early days in North America, but anyone's experience would be helpful. Love the vehicle, just hoping for something that is ACTUALLY different from a Land Rover experience.
![[ Adam ]](/data/avatars/s/9046/9046040.jpg?1705937698){kind=avatar}
