My boys and I went to the Billing LandRover show this morning.. apart from being at the heart of the lions den, it was a really enjoyable trip.
We did two laps of the lakeside off road course.. Pleased to report that we didn’t get stuck or let the Ineos side down in any way..
This was our first proper test and I have the following observations:
1. The steering wheel.. There were a number of technical sections which required a lot of wheel work. I didn’t mind that, but two things stand out. The first was that the steering wheel is difficult to read when you’re going lock to lock and occasionally I had to focus on recognising top dead centre. In my view, a three spoke wheel would be more satisfactory. The second thing I noticed was that the mute button and speech button got activated by my palm when working the wheel. Not a real problem as we had the radio off and I do have large hands..
2. Turning circle. In the technical sections you do end up working hard to get the vehicle manoeuvred around trees and other obstacles. Just a case of getting round carefully. The only other thing we noticed was a couple of bangs when we first got in to full axle articulation. I speculate that is was the coils just shifting about. Once we’d heard it twice, we didn’t hear it again.
3. In technical sections, the whole car is very precise and you can thread it through stuff if you get the entry right and don’t get too excited with the throttle.
4. Steep entry / exit wading. Low range, 1st gear manual mode, it was a joy, is immensely capable and you don’t have to really work the engine on exit. The torque delivery is seismic. Interestingly a few discos 3 really struggled and a few had to get towed out.
5. General size. For a big barge, it is very easy to gauge all the corners and avoid any unpleasant bashing of body on wood or gate posts. I few course marshals commented how quiet it was v the loud defender and discos throbbing and smoking their way around.
6. Wading. Low range, diff on and c 800/900mm depth. Absolutely no problem at all. You don’t need to work the engine hard at all and once the bow wave had formed, it was a case of just maintaining momentum and it cruised through all the water sections.
7. Uniqueness. Bearing in mind we were at a landrover do, the Gren carries a big presence and you do feel like a celebrity driving around in one.
8. Sanity. I had to question my sanity in throwing my new baby around a 4x4 course when everyone else was using 20 year old bashed up mud pluggers.. There were a handful of new defenders and one other Gren doing it today. Apparently the other Gren was owned by the head of Ineos chemical .. esteemed company indeed..
I’ll post a full video later today but I did take a photo of it once we’d got home.
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