Ineos Grenadier, do you reckon it'll take off?

**scarry** · 11th November 2025, 12:28 PM

Originally Posted by one_iota

I did a quick calculation using the Reserve Bank's inflation calculator to determine what my now departed 2008 Defender cost in today's dollars.

It cost me $50000 new and I added stuff (as you do) like a bull bar lets say another $15000 so $65000. if I was to add rear locker add say another $5000. so a total cost to me of $70000 in 2008 dollars.

The Defender cost me close to $106.000 in today's money.

Makes the Grenadier and the L663 Defender look like better value considering what you get for your extra dollars.

I am sure the new one will depreciate a lot more than the old one.

**DoubleChevron** · 11th November 2025, 03:50 PM

Holly crap.... I figured "a thread about that french 4wd this could be interesting reading".... 'Cos who in there right mind would buy a crappy french car, let alone a 4wd made in france..... Wow ... 170pages of messages

They are either really good or really crap ..... But I don't have time to read 170 pages and find out

**Captain_Rightfoot** · 11th November 2025, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by DoubleChevron

Holly crap.... I figured "a thread about that french 4wd this could be interesting reading".... 'Cos who in there right mind would buy a crappy french car, let alone a 4wd made in france..... Wow ... 170pages of messages

They are either really good or really crap ..... But I don't have time to read 170 pages and find out

They are ok, and probably getting better if you've got the budget for a "premium niche brand". Who may have pretty limited support.

**grey_ghost** · 11th November 2025, 05:59 PM

Originally Posted by Tombie

A new Defender is literally a beefed up, now OTA updated Discovery 4 with some design cues to the old.

D4s are proving incredibly resilient (ok some 3.0l aren’t) but the body, suspension and basic electro/mechanical are holding together just fine.

I can remember when I purchased my Tomb Raider TD5 seeing multitudes of them in the workshop having niggles and problems rectified. Now nobody thinks twice about a few maintenance items and off they go.

My D4 as an example is about to roll 230k, its total maintenance bill would be sub $15k for its entire life.

Hi mate,

I have a new Defender. This week I clocked over 163,000km and have had zero issues. But the traditionalists don’t want to hear that.

Cheers,
GG

**Captain_Rightfoot** · 11th November 2025, 07:43 PM

Originally Posted by grey_ghost

Hi mate,

I have a new Defender. This week I clocked over 163,000km and have had zero issues. But the traditionalists don’t want to hear that.

Cheers,
GG

That's great to hear, and I'm happy for you.

However quality is not about making one good car. It's about making all of them good. It's no point making 8 perfect ones and 2 raging disasters. In quality surveys around the world, land rover is perennially in the sin bin.

Personally the oldest the "Defender" can be is five years .. So still under warranty. Let's talk when it's ten, if it's still on the road.

Cross fingers for a good outcome for you!

For me... I don't drive my car around town. I only use it for remote touring. Where a failure to proceed could result at best being stuck somewhere at best, or at worst an expensive recovery or even a life threatening situation. Would I be game to take 80 computers and a whole bunch of sensors, plumbing and actualtors out to the bush when 10, or 15, or 20? The saying "are you feeling lucky, punk" is making an appearance in a corner of the brain.. From what we've seen of the predecessor.. the D3 and D4.. I've not seen anything to give me any confidence. Whenever I'm involved with one on a remote trip it ends badly.

My old defender .. it requires a lot of maintenance. But it's simple, and it's even possible to fix with basic tools and amateur mechanic skills.

**Captain_Rightfoot** · 12th November 2025, 06:46 AM

Having thought about this over night. Electronics has been in cars since forever. My Lotus from the 60's has a substantial amount of electronics which has been really trouble free in the 25 years I've owned it. Remarkable hey!.

My defender has an ECU, a body computer and an alarm module, and an electrically controlled engine. But this level of electronics is similar to cars from the 80's and 90's. In my 20 years of ownership, this has also proven trouble free except from one time when the door wiring shorted. But again - this was something that could be sorted by myself in the bush.

Meanwhile - modern landrovers have many many times this amount of electronics. On a recent trip, we had a D3 whose alternator and ECU failed to negotiate that the alternator should charge although apparently the alternator was not in fact broken. So this thing kept going flat. In the desert. So we could swap batteries with a car with a working alternator and get a little while off the car.

If we swapped a battery out of a hilux the only impact on the car was the clock lost the time and trip meter reset. If we swapped a battery out of a range rover you had to have a scan tool to reset the faults to get the car to start, and then for 20 minutes you'd be clearing the cascading faults stopping various car systems from functioning.

I wish the people with modern LR's well but for whatever reason LR are flying too close to the sun and I don't want anything to do with it! If I go bush it's to go bush, not to deal with this rubbish.

There are multiple reports of Ineos Grenadiers failing to proceed and people on forums "Lock it and leave it for 20 minutes then try again". I'm going to need some convincing.

Thread: Ineos Grenadier, do you reckon it'll take off?

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