Anyone cross shopping the ineos grenadier?

I’ve seen several around town and my neighbor has one . Stock KO2’s, front and rear lockers. It’s impressive.

 

Some of you guys are acting like buying a 5th gen 4Runner is a calculated, pragmatic, objective decision - devoid of irrational/emotional factors. If it were, no one would buy this gas-chugging, poor-handling, slow, loud, outdated... truck. BUT (and it's a big but), we love the things for a couple pragmatic factors - mainly, it's incredibly reliable and then, a few irrational/emotional factors.

A downside of all of ^that^ is that we're not alone - there are #$@*ing hundreds of thousands of these things on the road. Hell, on my .75 mile long street, there are four 5th gen 4Runners (three of them are silver!). Coming from a 100 Series, it's the ONE thing I don't like about my 4Runner... it's just so damn common.

I absolutely see the appeal of an Ineos for that reason - to drive something that's more "one in a million" instead of "one of a million."

 

I’m happy for ya . Enjoy it . Life is short .

 

Yours doesn’t have front and rear lockers ?

 

I have lockers.. a must have for this vehicle, if intending to off road.

I was just saying I would not be pushing the limits of both the 4R ORP nor this vehicle.

 

A guy who parks in the same parking garage as me in Down Town Dallas has one. I think he's the same guy who also parks the following: His Cyber truck. His Hummer EV. His Lamborghini Aventador. His Ford Raptor R.

 

I’ve owned some exotics. They come with caveats. My first 4WD vehicle was an ‘85 Toyota Xtra-Cab pickup. Not exotic. It was stolen, and I was sad. I replaced it with a 1985 280GE G-Wagen. A different concept than the G500. No carpet. No leather. No wood. All business. It was a gray market vehicle, with some modifications to make it smog legal. Mostly those modifications involved borrowing emissions parts from a concurrent U.S. import sedan with a similar motor. The G-Wagen was great. Parts were an issue though. Any parts not common to other domestically available models of Mercedes had to be ordered from Germany. I could walk up to the dealership parts counter to order them, but I’d have to supply the part number, because the dealership didn’t have microfiche for the G-Wagen. I had scans of the fiche on CD-ROM. The parts availability issue always loomed in the back of my mind. Then I had an opportunity to get another G-Wagen. This time a 1991 300GE short wheelbase cabriolet. Its short wheelbase made it superior to the 280GE. Plus it was full-time 4WD with three locking diffs from the factory. And it had a 5-speed. I will not enumerate here the long list of features that made these vehicles superior. Just take it from me that they were.

But then, about a year after the G500 began to be imported, the Mercedes parts department had a policy change. To order parts one had to supply the vin. The vin’s of these two gray market vehicles were not in the system, and I was cut off from getting parts. I literally begged, to no avail. In those days Mercedes came with a booklet of all the places in the world one could have his Mercedes serviced. My local dealership was in the book! But they still wouldn’t sell me parts. I tried other dealerships with the same poor result. I couldn’t stomach the idea of breaking something on the trail and having to wait two weeks for parts. I will never own another Mercedes.

Ultimately I sold the G-Wagens and replaced them with a 1997 Defender 90. Also an incredibly capable vehicle. Quirky and primitive compared to the G-Wagens, but still fantastic off road.. Ladies and gentlemen, I love my 4Runner, but even with A-Trac, Crawl Control and Multi-terrain Select the capabilities of the 4Runner don’t come close to these vehicles. Anyway, though the Defender was officially imported and supported by Land Rover, there were precious few of them imported (less than 7000 I think.) And after 25 years some parts were becoming scarce. Especially parts unique to the North American version. Some parts became mail order only, and some became not available at all.

And so I have the 4Runner. And while it is not as capable as its predecessors it is still very capable. And I can get any part I want for it. And the availability of aftermarket parts is unbelievable. For the Defender, aftermarket choices were slim, and for the G-Wagen, in those days, practically non existent. I lifted the cabriolet. The springs had to be ordered from Germany, and determining which springs to order required weighing each corner of the vehicle and poring over charts and graphs to get the lift and ride right.

The point that @backpacker makes about parts availability can’t be overstated. And I would think twice about a Grenadier, having been down that road before.

On my first day on this board I read the following (borrowed I think from Full Metal Jacket): “This is my 4Runner. There are many like it but this one is mine.”

 

Last week at work that movie popped into my head while I was perusing this site. I heard Matthew Modine saying:

"This is my 4Runner. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My 4Runner is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
Without me, my 4Runner is useless. Without my 4Runner, I am useless. I must mod my 4Runner true. I must mod better than my enemy who is trying to flex on me."

 

Hahahaha! Love it.

 

That Defender 90 is a thing of beauty! The first Landrover I drove was in the early 90's, it was an uncommon "airborne" version, the official name is "1/2 ton lightweight". That thing was so amazingly impressive off-road that when I moved back to the US, I went straight to a Landrover dealership to look at the new Defenders. They were way out of my price range, but the Defender and the Hilux are my grail vehicles to this day (the Series 70 recently joined them lol).

 

I looked up that ½ Ton Lightweight. Very cool.

 

If I had a spare garage and budget to park some occasional-drive exotics, I’d make space for a Grenadier.

But alas, I got a two-car garage, a couple noisy dogs, and spend my mornings in the drop line at the elementary school, so it’s 4Runner for me, by a very wide margin. What do I care if a lot of my neighbors agree & drive them too?

 

Haha. When I had the Defender (with sideways-facing jump seats in the rear) I’d be in the carpool line with a child seat in the front. No one ever said anything, but I got a lot of sideways glances.

 

I grew up in the 80's. A "Child Seat" was the vinyl bench seat that was secured to the bed of my dad's GMC Sierra single cab pickup. Adults in the front, kids in the back. Don't worry, it was totally safe. We had a camper shell that would stop us from flying out of it during hard braking or fast acceleration.

 

I grew up in the ‘60’s. The first car we had with seat belts came along when I was 8 years old. Before that we spent most rides standing on the back seat.

 

I ride the kiddo to school on a cargo bike. There is another grenadier at the school pickup lane though.. need to do the “hey same car!?” meet n greet

 

I am too old for front solid axle so I went with E-KDSS on GX550

 

So you are 4R less as well now?

 

Very soon

 

I think I've seen this bike in a Dr. Suess book before. It may have been "Hop on Pop!"

 

When the bike trailer is in tow, I need to take wide right angle turns like a semi truck..

 

I had a similar setup for preschool, but none of the institutions that came afterwards had bike-friendly topography.

Folding bike with modified rack to hold the child seat, plus a jogging stroller with the front wheel removed and replaced with a home made hitch made from electrical conduit and some other bits:

 

That thing’s bigger than your Grenadier!

 

The grenadier is identical in length to the 4Runner. That bike train is very close to matching the 4R’s length