(TOP) INEOS GRENADIER NEWS

Jim Ratcliffe, we know, does not mess about. He is Britain’s richest man and self-evidently a phenomenal entrepreneur, whose fortune is derived from petrochemicals and a host of other industrial products. 

But he’s also owner of the French Ligue One side OGC Nice, provider of the financial muscle behind professional cycling team Ineos Grenadiers and Sir Ben Ainslie’s America’s Cup campaign, as well as having a 33 per cent stake in the Mercedes Formula One team. Ratcliffe = SUCCESS. (Fist thumps onto vast oak-panelled desk.)

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll also know that Jim loves old-school, hardcore off-roaders, the sort of vehicles that do without the S in SUV. He doesn’t want the lily-livered new Defender, he wants the original, a mission that was stymied when Land Rover refused to sell him the rights. 

This is one of the things that makes the Ineos Grenadier so fascinating: it’s indivisible from the man who’s bankrolling it. When was the last time anyone on this side of the pond had the cojones to start an entirely new car company on this sort of scale?

All told, this is an investment/gamble that sails well past the £1bn mark, and Ineos is reckoning on annual sales of 25,000 units. We’ll find out pretty soon what the Grenadier is like to drive, but what we can update you on is the factory in which the first cars are currently coming together. 

It’s the plant in Hambach, north-eastern France, a hoot and a holler from the German border, and formerly known as Smartville because its primary purpose was the manufacture of Smart cars. It represented a €450m investment by Daimler when it opened in 1997, in the presence of Jacques Chirac and Helmut Kohl, and whatever deal Jim and co have done to build the Grenadier here, you have to take your hat off: they’ve netted themselves a world-class facility, complete with a highly trained workforce, a bunch of fabulously obedient robots, and a state-of-the-art paintshop.

Bridgend in Wales was, of course, initially tipped to be the Grenadier’s home, and the change of course – in tandem with Jim’s Brexity political inclinations – proved controversial. But a day spent touring the various constituent parts of this 210,000 sq m factory complex confirms that, politics aside, the Grenadier is unlikely to suffer from too many quality issues. This is quite the indoctrination.

First up, we watch as a measuring machine called an Eagle Eye – made by German specialist Zeiss – laser scans 4,000 separate weld points on a Grenadier body-in-white, in a relentless pursuit for imperfections. Apparently, this is the only car assembly plant in France to benefit from this equipment, and it takes four hours to do the measuring and two to carry out the analysis. 

Then another machine conducts a further 1,000 measurements, running its beady beam across all the radii, shutlines and even inside the headlamps. In parallel, a destructive test is done on a body-in-white, using machinery that has cut the time it takes from six weeks to three.

“I’m lucky, we’ve inherited a lot of Mercedes guys, so they are very well trained,” Stefan Bruhnke, Ineos’s director of quality management, says, before citing the G-wagen as the paragon. “But I think perhaps we are exceeding even that now. Of course, we only have one opportunity to get it right.” BBC Top Gear - link - Jason Barlow - link - H2 Grenadier - link - more like this - link