Ineos Automotive, Britain’s latest car manufacturer, would probably not be British for long, with confirmation that he is negotiating with Daimler to take over the wise factory to build his Grenadier SUV.
He suspended plans to build the Grenadier in Bridgend, Wales, in favour of negotiations with Daimler over his wise plant in Hambach, eastern France. It also suspended the progression of a chassis plant in Portugal.
The Grenadier, which seeks internationally to be a visual improvement still without shame from the former Land Rover Defender, is said to have been built next to a Ford engine factory scheduled to close in the autumn.
Ineos, which also sponsors the Mercedes-AMG Formula One team that won the first Formula One race of 2020 through Valtteri Bottas, hoped to employ two hundred other people in the initial wave of Grenadiers, and then up to another 500 people in the long term. He had already innovated in factories in Wales and Portugal.
However, after promoting some of his wise business to Geely in China last year and selling the rest, Daimler put the Hambach plant up for sale last week.
He had already prepared the production of Mercedes-Benz’s largest SUV, so a deal would make sense for Daimler and Ineos, especially with a potentially chaotic Brexit coming, as the maximum of the main portions of the Grenadier comes from the European continent.
Chassis, stamping, representation and meeting can be controlled at an unmarried site in Hambach, where primary portions from all over Europe are collected.
Negotiations with Daimler have begun in recent days, which explains the hasty closure of the other Ineos facilities.
Ineos has only shown that new features have recently emerged for him, despite his participation in state-sponsored agreements in Wales and Portugal.
“Some new options have been opened, like this with the Hambach plant, which you didn’t have before,” Dirk Heilmann, managing director of Ineos Automotive, told the BBC.
“So we go back and wonder if adding two new production services is the right thing to do in today’s environment.
“Safety is, of course, paramount, but we also have a legal responsibility to do the right thing for the company, so we want to compare those new opportunities to keep our deadlines,” Heilmann said.
British Economy Minister Ken Skates liked it, and told the BBC it would be “a severe blow if Ineos gave up his public commitment.”
“I told the CEO that leaving Bridgend at this overdue stage, after so much effort and money invested in preparing the site, would be a terrible resolution for Wales and the UK,” he said.
“We have convinced the company in transparent terms of the importance of honouring its commitment to Wales and keeping its promise to build a British icon here in Britain.”
Ineos, the chemicals company owned by Britain’s richest man, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, began recruiting to build its own rugged off-roader as soon as Ratcliffe saw Land Rover move the Defender upmarket.
“The allocation of Grenadiers began by identifying a hole in the market, abandoned by several manufacturers, for an all-terrain vehicle application,” said Ratcliffe, president of INEOS.
“This gave us our engineering plan for a capable, durable and reliable 4×4 designed to take care of the toughest environments in the world.”
Oddly, the Grenadier is similar in size to the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen, but uses an Italian-assembled, eight-speed transmission from Germany’s ZF and six-cylinder gasoline and diesel engines from BMW.
Ineos said the car, which will first be sold as a five-door family car circle, will charge around 40,000 euros in the UK when it goes on sale in 18 months and the company will break even 25,000 cars a year.
Most engineering paints made through contract manufacturer Magna Steyr in Austria
Ineos would be the first British car manufacturer to leave the UK. Brexiteer John Dyson planned to do the same with his electric car after moving the company’s headquarters to Singapore. He has since abandoned plans to build electric cars, admitting that he underestimates the burden of development.
I’ve been testing cars and writing about the auto industry for over 25 years. My career began in the newspapers and became the writing of two
I’ve been testing cars and writing about the auto industry for over 25 years. My career began in the newspapers and evolved in the writing of two automotive magazines. I founded myself in Italy as a freelancer for more than a decade, covering the European automotive sector, with a focus on product testing and product progression for readers around the world. I judge the smart and badness of cars about how they carry out their intended purposes at their cost to their target consumers compared to all their competitors. I don’t have short or long positions in the automotive industry, basically because this can only compromise the integrity of my work, so my written positions are a condensation of having knowledge combined with about 4 complete cycles of delight value.