Africa

[Dono 17]

Hello All,
I was fortunate enough to spend a week in Botswana and another in the Kruger park in South Africa. Spoke to many of the lodges about perhaps adopting the IG as their overlanding vehicles/ game drive vehicles and work vehicles. They currently all (but one outfit) use Landcruiser 70 series trucks. The lodges in Botswana are extremely remote - 45 min flight time via Cessna Caravan and one required a ferry ride to bring vehicles in to the Okovango. They service their own vehicles. Oil changes and air filters every month or 100 hours and full transmission and break fluid flush annually. The fleet of Landrover at Londolozi (2014-2016, 110 Defenders) have a similar maintenance schedule.
Speaking with the management team they cited the lack of parts quickly available for the IG, cost and the retraining required to maintain these vehicles. They see them as expensive and niche/ exotic in Africa. The lodges in Botswana have no plans to even consider IG as a working vehicle solution. The mining industry in SA seems to have the same view apparently. Ineos needs to make inroads into large industry, the farming and the mining sector. If China doesn’t buy a MASSIVE amount of Grenadiers in the next 2-3 years, old Jim may be forced to shut it down to prevent further hemorrhage.
This is really concerning given the soft global sales so far. What are your opinions regarding this? D

 

[Shopkeep]

Hello All,
I was fortunate enough to spend a week in Botswana and another in the Kruger park in South Africa. Spoke to many of the lodges about perhaps adopting the IG as their overlanding vehicles/ game drive vehicles and work vehicles. They currently all (but one outfit) use Landcruiser 70 series trucks. The lodges in Botswana are extremely remote - 45 min flight time via Cessna Caravan and one required a ferry ride to bring vehicles in to the Okovango. They service their own vehicles. Oil changes and air filters every month or 100 hours and full transmission and break fluid flush annually. The fleet of Landrover at Londolozi (2014-2016, 110 Defenders) have a similar maintenance schedule.
Speaking with the management team they cited the lack of parts quickly available for the IG, cost and the retraining required to maintain these vehicles. They see them as expensive and niche/ exotic in Africa. The lodges in Botswana have no plans to even consider IG as a working vehicle solution. The mining industry in SA seems to have the same view apparently. Ineos needs to make inroads into large industry, the farming and the mining sector. If China doesn’t buy a MASSIVE amount of Grenadiers in the next 2-3 years, old Jim may be forced to shut it down to prevent further hemorrhage.
This is really concerning given the soft global sales so far. What are your opinions regarding this? D

I think Ineos plans to sell Grenadiers to the well heeled guests of the lodges for personal use rather than to the lodges for commercial use.

 

[bigleonski]

Hard to disagree with them.
It is niche.

 

[SkiBum1]

Hello All,
I was fortunate enough to spend a week in Botswana and another in the Kruger park in South Africa. Spoke to many of the lodges about perhaps adopting the IG as their overlanding vehicles/ game drive vehicles and work vehicles. They currently all (but one outfit) use Landcruiser 70 series trucks. The lodges in Botswana are extremely remote - 45 min flight time via Cessna Caravan and one required a ferry ride to bring vehicles in to the Okovango. They service their own vehicles. Oil changes and air filters every month or 100 hours and full transmission and break fluid flush annually. The fleet of Landrover at Londolozi (2014-2016, 110 Defenders) have a similar maintenance schedule.
Speaking with the management team they cited the lack of parts quickly available for the IG, cost and the retraining required to maintain these vehicles. They see them as expensive and niche/ exotic in Africa. The lodges in Botswana have no plans to even consider IG as a working vehicle solution. The mining industry in SA seems to have the same view apparently. Ineos needs to make inroads into large industry, the farming and the mining sector. If China doesn’t buy a MASSIVE amount of Grenadiers in the next 2-3 years, old Jim may be forced to shut it down to prevent further hemorrhage.
This is really concerning given the soft global sales so far. What are your opinions regarding this? D

Makes alot of sense. These aren’t simple to work on and debug not to mention the learning curve for your bush mechanics that have never worked on a modern bmw engine.

 

[Dono 17]

Agreed… but like all businesses…. Cash flow is O2! Volume sales is what needed to keep the IG alive. Pray the Chinese market loves it or I fear Sir Jim may have to cut his losses and move on.

 

[mcdoogs]

Sounds about right. This is a luxury priced niche exotic vehicle with less than 24 months of production under its belt. It would be rather insane for these kinds of businesses to drop large piles of cash on Ineos.

Its rather interesting that its a topic of conversation, that speaks to how effective the upfront marketing of the Grenadier was in painting the picture of a ‘defender replacement’ downmarket go-anywhere proletarian vehicle.

This rather cranky guy explains it best

View: https://youtu.be/TgrmNIUd1kw?si=hTbwxMpKJp2VXlWT

 

[LeeroyJ]

Ineos would need to do what Toyota has long done with the Land Cruiser: Make an "industrial" version that is meant for these non-luxury uses. Until recently, the 70 series (which started production in 1984!) was only available with a manual transmission, manual windows, manual door locks, simple essentially tractor engines (like the HJ75 that I had in my 76 series), no cruise control, no digital dash, cloth manually-adjustable seats, manual side mirrors, cable-activated lockers, etc.

We don't have insight into what Ineos' long term plans are, but I would not be surprised if they are working on something like this. The new LC 70 series has departed from Toyota's earlier simplicity ethos, so there is a market opportunity for a vehicle like this to replace the LC70's that are aging out of these fleets. That gap will probably be filled by the Chinese if someone else doesn't do that.

In KSA for comparison, when I bought my 2012 200 series land cruiser, depending on the options they started at SAR 150K and went up to about SAR 420K (USD $40K to $112K). All we could get in the US were the upper level trims. I wonder how well a manual diesel cloth seat LC would have sold in the US at that time for $40K.

 

[Jeremy996]

The problem every manufacturer crashes into with any new vehicle in the western world are the legal requirements around emissions, passive and active crash safety, perceived quality, convenience functions and marketing. Almost every brand new vehicle is an exotic by his definition, which he conceded towards the end of the video, talking about the issues around the newer 2.8l Toyota motors and gearboxes.

My old LR110CSW was not an exotic by his definition, but I would not be willing to take it anywhere without a parts store in easy reach; the frequency of major/minor failures made journeys something of an adventure. Many of them were down to poor design or poor quality spares, but some things, like poor door seals and lousy HVAC were just a product of the age of the design.

In a few years time, Ineos may have the bandwidth to build a rugged country special; non-turbo, large capacity, diesel/petrol, manual windows, manual transmission, basic AC etc etc, but they will not be able to sell it in any western country, (and we won't be able to import one, either).

As for dumb bits of design; which dumbass decided to build a transfer box without a neutral? My truck stopped dead in running water. It had to stay there overnight as it was as immobile as a rock until this morning, when I could get my 13mm ractchet spanner on the transfer case bolt without drowning or freezing to death.

 

[Krabby]

The problem every manufacturer crashes into with any new vehicle in the western world are the legal requirements around emissions, passive and active crash safety, perceived quality, convenience functions and marketing. Almost every brand new vehicle is an exotic by his definition, which he conceded towards the end of the video, talking about the issues around the newer 2.8l Toyota motors and gearboxes.

My old LR110CSW was not an exotic by his definition, but I would not be willing to take it anywhere without a parts store in easy reach; the frequency of major/minor failures made journeys something of an adventure. Many of them were down to poor design or poor quality spares, but some things, like poor door seals and lousy HVAC were just a product of the age of the design.

In a few years time, Ineos may have the bandwidth to build a rugged country special; non-turbo, large capacity, diesel/petrol, manual windows, manual transmission, basic AC etc etc, but they will not be able to sell it in any western country, (and we won't be able to import one, either).

As for dumb bits of design; which dumbass decided to build a transfer box without a neutral? My truck stopped dead in running water. It had to stay there overnight as it was as immobile as a rock until this morning, when I could get my 13mm ractchet spanner on the transfer case bolt without drowning or freezing to death.

I know you showed a photo of your situation in a different thread - please post an update there so we know where things stand.

 

[Zimm]

No third world commercial entity is going from Toyota with relatively easy to fix components, and stellar distribution network, to Ineos. Ineos could have gotten everything right on the rig and it doesn't stand a chance. This isn't 1965 anymore.