We meet the first-ever ‘blue light’ Ineos Grenadier, which is in service with the Nith Inshore Lifeboat
Chris Rosamond Chris_rosamond@autovia.co.uk
NOT long ago, the outline of a Land Rover bedecked with blue lights and police stickers was a common sight on motorway or dual carriageway overpasses. Presumably not much good in a hot pursuit – on tarmac at least – but you couldn’t argue with the reassuringly characterful appeal of a Landie kitted out for emergencies.
Nowadays you scarcely see a police car of any sort on the road, thanks to the proliferation of speed cameras and Highways Agency ‘traffic officers’, who help to keep our major routes rolling. Even the Highways Agency has ditched their JLR products in favour of Volvo XC90 or BMW X5 plug-in hybrids, but that famously wasn’t something Britain’s richest man, Jim Ratcliffe, was prepared to do. When the owner of chemicals giant Ineos was told he couldn’t buy another ‘old school’ Defender, he first tried to buy the tooling from JLR so he could build his own. Denied that opportunity, he did what any self-respecting tycoon would do when piqued, and lashed out £1.5bn to build a better version instead.
In doing so, Ratcliffe immediately became the hero of legions of traditional Land Rover Defender and older Series model owners, who were similarly outraged by JLR’s decision to axe its most iconic model. In some respects their fears seemed well founded when it became evident that JLR’s Defender replacement would be a monocoque design dripping with electronic tech aimed more at wealthy school-runners and leisure users, rather than down-to-earth sheep farmers or other buyers in need of a rufty-tufty off-road tool.
Users like the volunteer crew of the Nith Inshore Lifeboat, for example. They provide emergency rescue services for the often treacherous waters and tidal mud banks of the Solway Firth, as well as supporting other emergency services across Dumfries and Galloway when water-borne search and rescue operations are required. As a result, the little volunteer lifeboat station on the banks of the river Nith has become the UK’s first ‘blue light’ emergency service to enlist the new Grenadier, so we ventured up the M6 in a public-issue version of the beefy off-roader to find out more.
Needing to get their rescue boats to awkward-to-reach places, the volunteers were relying on an elderly Defender for towing duties. A replacement was overdue, but they’d been eyeing the latest more road-focused model warily.
