Could Ineos Be the Next Tesla?
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There’s an old saying about doing something yourself if you want it done right.
In the case of Ineos Automotive, it doesn’t hurt to have billions of British pounds burning a hole in your proverbial pocket and a lust for Land Rovers of yore. That, in a nutshell, is how Jim Ratcliffe — Sir James Arthur Ratcliffe, if you want to make this a formal introduction — took his petrochemicals fortune and parlayed it into a passion project that hasn’t quite shaken up the luxury auto sector just yet, but it certainly has the potential to do so.
A Legend is Born
As the story goes, Ratcliffe, a devotee of the original Defender, approached Land Rover leaders about buying the tooling to continue his favourite SUV’s production run after 67 successive years. After being denied, Ratcliffe decided to take matters into his own hands by designing and building something more like a callback to his beloved brute than a continuation of it. And thus, Ineos Automotive was born.
That’s the short story, anyway. The long version includes hiring the right designers and engineers, and sourcing parts from brands like BMW to make the mass-production equivalent of a restomod — more or less an old vehicle with modern parts. Only instead of actually being old, the Grenadier is brand new and rides on a fully boxed frame with a fresh powertrain and a whole bunch of the latest and greatest off-road equipment.
“We absolutely saw a gap in the automotive market, and our view is there’s nothing like the Grenadier,” according to George Ratcliffe, the brand’s newly appointed President of the Americas, who said the Grenadier can be seen as a response to SUVs that have grown “softer” in recent years.
“There’s a hole left in that 4x4 world, and that’s what we wanted to fill,” he continued. “We wouldn’t have gone into a really crowded car market if we were going to make the same (products) as everybody else.”
It’s worth remembering Ratcliffe’s dad has a deep love affair with the since-discontinued Defender that this SUV — as well as the so-called Quartermaster version that has a pickup bed bolted to the back — bears a striking resemblance to. Of course, that’s by design both literally and figuratively, with the Grenadier filling the gap left behind by that British-built machine. But there’s more to selling vehicles than simply building them. To do so means appealing to the right people.
Making an Impact
It’s not often we focus much attention on how automakers market themselves here at AutoTrader, but then it’s not everyday that a new brand is born — not to mention one that gives us unfettered access to some of its top executives. And it doesn’t take much time with the younger Ratcliffe, along with CEO Lynn Calder and Executive Vice-President Gregor Hembrough, to get a sense of how committed the entire team is to making inroads in what’s a particularly tough corner of a challenging industry as a whole.
Garnering attention — the right kind of attention — in the premium segment isn’t easy, especially when the products themselves lack the sort of amenities you might rightly expect at this price point. And while the build quality is certainly up to snuff, it’s not the sort of feature that shows up in a showroom or on a spec sheet.
Instead, the Grenadier is like the automotive equivalent of an expedition parka from Canada Goose: overbuilt for a very specific use case — it just so happens to be fashionable, too. And while there’s no question that it’s easier for an established brand to sell a $2,000 jacket than it is for an unknown one like Ineos to hawk six-figure SUVs, the Grenadier has the advantage of the visual impact it makes through its presence alone, with a unique ability to turn heads that’s based at least in part on its relative obscurity.
“When you drive a Grenadier anywhere ... you have to plan another 20 minutes on your journey, because people come up to you off the street and they want to know about it,” Ratcliffe said. “When was the last time that the average person actually took an interest in a new car?”
Ratcliffe said that response has helped reassure the team that its approach was the right one, but it knows it needs to boost brand awareness in order to sell more vehicles. That job is especially difficult in an industry that’s swimming in advertising dollars, which is why Ineos is taking a targeted approach to the way it markets itself.
In the mix is the brand’s sponsorship of the inaugural season of the Snow League — the professional winter sports series launched by legendary snowboarder Shaun White. After all, the slopes and ski lodges around Aspen, Colo., are where you might find the sort of well-heeled shopper with the financial means to make one of these six-figure sport utilities make sense.
The strategically parked Grenadiers garnered more than their share of the spotlight during the weekend-long festivities, including the attention of two men who approached Ineos brand ambassadors with variations of the same simple questions: What is it? And where can I buy one? (One of them wanted to buy one each for himself and his daughter right then and there, which, he was disappointed to learn, wouldn’t be possible.)
Final Thoughts
That brings us back to the headline, which, rest assured, was more than a plot to get you here in the first place. (It was also written before the brand boycotts and protests outside Tesla dealers.) Of course, the most obvious difference between Ineos Automotive and Tesla is that the latter has never built anything powered by internal combustion, while the former has yet to deliver its all-electric Fusilier model.
The implied connection between the two brands is about more than having billionaires at their helms, too; that’s not the sort of low-hanging fruit we like to pick here at AutoTrader. Instead, it comes down to two simple words: disruption and determination. Not many people have the mettle — or the means — to take a sketch on a £5 bill and turn it into a reality, and yet here we are.
Ineos isn’t looking to be the industry’s best-selling brand — at least not outwardly. But it’s hard to imagine a firm founded by a man like Jim Ratcliffe settling into a niche and staying there.
