Is SA’s best double-cab bakkie a BMW?
BMW doesn’t make a bakkie, but that doesn’t mean SA’s best double-cab isn’t partly a BMW. The Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster, with its Teutonic powerplant, sets a new benchmark.
Since “the R1-million double-cab bakkie” became a thing in South Africa when Mercedes-Benz launched its X350d 4Matic in 2019, several legacy bakkie brands have breached the 7-figure price point. What was once a market segment occupied by the failed X-Class, is now inhabited by the apex derivatives of the Volkswagen Amarok, Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger, Isuzu D-Max, Land Cruiser 79, and Jeep Gladiator.
The R1-million-plus bakkie market is a fascinating one because it contains ancient designs, such as the Land Cruiser 79, and very sophisticated bakkies, such as the Ford Ranger Raptor. South African buyers in this segment are certainly a mixed crowd, with leisure buyers desiring a safer all-terrain family car (the Amarok and Ranger are good examples), while hardcore off-road work crews need Land Cruisers.
For those with a budget of R1-million-plus there are several good choices: Ranger Raptor, Land Cruiser 79 V8, Jeep Gladiator, a fully loaded Amarok or Ranger V6 turbodiesel and top-of-the-range Hiluxes. But the ultimate double-cab bakkie might be a new addition to the market. And one with no brand heritage.
To launch a R1-million-plus double-cab with zero brand equity or lineage is either deeply naive or very committed, and the people who created Ineos Grenadier are mostly the latter – and very little of the former. Backed by a brand that was built from the success of one of Europe’s most profitable chemical companies, the Ineos automotive team lacks neither skill nor business acumen.
But where does the Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster rank in the local hierarchy of R1-million-plus double cabs?
Looks matter to double-cab buyers
Design is a great differentiator, but with bakkies, it’s even more important than with passenger cars – and very challenging to do. A bakkie’s ladder-frame platform and load tray structure make it challenging for designers to create much brand identity. For example, unlike an SUV or crossover, you don’t have a big tailgate, rear glass sections or light clusters to style and express brand identity on a double cab.
A double cab’s proportions may be simple, but its design touches don’t have to be, although deviation can be disastrous. Many good bakkies have been undone by the design; Mazda’s 2nd-generation BT-50 and nearly all bakkies ever made by SsangYong are examples of good engineering undone by design.
That brings us to the Quartermaster, where Ineos has created something traditional yet different. The design draws from Land Rover’s original Defender and looks terrific. There are no silly surface creases or pinch lines along the bakkie’s doors or bonnet. Flat surfaces on the body panels and round headlights make the Quartermaster look timeless and purposeful instead of plain or, worse, ridiculous.
The best bakkie cabin… has plenty of buttons
Cabin architecture always follows trends, and that’s a problem for double-cab design teams. Prevailing interior design trends that might work for a new EV, crossover, or luxury SUV won’t work equally well in a double cab. But why?
Well, because you are far more likely to drive across rough terrain in a double-cab 4×4 than a luxury SUV or crossover. And it’s exactly when double-cab bakkies start exploring the terrain types they are marketed to conquer that touchscreen haptics and touchscreen interfacing become annoying.
Bakkie owners love buttons, switches and toggles. When driving along a rural dirt road at speed and scanning for huge potholes, corrugations or cattle grazing (or loitering) on the verges, you want the intuition of reaching and touching a physical control to adjust the volume of the audio system’s playback or manage cabin ventilation. Try to operate a touchscreen on a corrugated gravel road – it’s impossible.
An overreliance on touchscreen functions is a disaster when you are operating a double-cab bakkie in the terrain and conditions it was intended for, and some vaunted brands in the R1-million-plus bakkie market have made the mistake of deleting too many physical controls and replacing them with haptics.
The Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster arguably has the best cabin architecture and UX of any bakkie by keeping it old-school without being too analogue and digitally agnostic. The 12.3-inch touchscreen infotainment system pairs seamlessly with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. However, the combination of touchscreen interfacing and lots of physical toggles, switches, and buttons differentiates the Quartermaster’s UX.
Ineos has done everything with the Quartermaster’s ergonomics and cabin interfaces that modern automotive UX designers tell you NOT to do. Ironically, that makes the Ineos double cab’s interior much more user-friendly than those of its rivals, who have erred in trying to bring passenger-car ergonomics and digitisation to the realm of the double-cab bakkie, where customers either don’t need or want it.
The bakkie with a BMW engine
Six-cylinder bakkies hold a lot of appeal in the R1-million-plus double cab market. Toyota supporters, of which there are many, would make a valid argument that 4-cylinder Hilux special edition bakkies, such as the widebody GR Sport III, sell strongly regardless of powertrain configuration… and that’s true. Still, buyers value the cruising performance and overtaking confidence of a 6-cylinder powerplant.
Remember that for the last few years that the 1st-generation Amarok was on the market, nearly all local sales were the V6 version. That’s why the Quartermaster is such a compelling alternative for drivers who want the unique styling of a rugged off-road vehicle supported by tri-locker capability and 6-cylinder engines. And those turbocharged engines are fuelled by either petrol or diesel, which is a big deal.
Ford’s Ranger Raptor is amazing; it offers the best suspension configuration of any local bakkie and unrivalled cruising speed performance, but it’s only available with a 3.0-litre twin-turbopetrol motor. And South African bakkie buyers are predisposed to diesel… It’s the same issue with Jeep Gladiator and its 3.6-litre V6 – it has terrific off-road ability, but very limited cruising range, because of its petrol engine.
Toyota offers the updated Land Cruiser 70 Series bakkies with both Hilux 2.8-litre 4-cylinder- and the legacy 4.5-litre V8 turbodiesel engines. However, none of those are segment leaders in terms of power, torque or powertrain smoothness. The Quartermaster, by contrast, is powered by engines sourced from a company that has probably built more legendary engine designs than any other: BMW.
Some may ask: “But can a BMW engine really be valid in a hardcore off-road bakkie?” The answer is yes, absolutely. Many of the 2.8-litre BMW-powered Defenders built in South Africa during the mid-1990s are still running strong and rank among the most collectable of all Land Rover models.
An inline-6 is ‘unbeatable’
BMW’s 3.0-litre turbodiesel engines are excellent and give the Quartermaster an unrivalled powertrain advantage in the South African market: enough power, great efficiency and unrivalled refinement. It would be difficult to argue that a better diesel engine exists in the R1-million-plus bakkie market.
The fact that Ineos chose to equip the Quartermaster with a ZF 8-speed automatic transmission is a boon to the bakkie’s overall driving experience. The ZF 8-speed ‘box, which is good enough for Rolls-Royce and Range Rover, certainly has the measure of any other double-cab’s automatic transmission.
BMW has always traded on the technical prowess of its inline sixes and, in a market where its rivals have V6s, the Quartermaster will be further differentiated by the smoothness of an inline 6-cylinder motor.
Ever wondered why a 4.5-litre Land Cruiser petrol bakkie is so revered? Simple: its inline-6 engine. There is no other engine configuration that rivals the inherent primary and secondary balance of an inline-6. And Ineos is the only brand marketing such an engine configuration in a South African double cab.
With 183 kW and 550 Nm on tap, the Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster’s 3.0-litre inline-6 turbodiesel is admittedly not the most potent engine in the R1-million-plus double-cab segment, but those outputs are perfectly adequate for executing brisk overtaking manoeuvres at highway speeds.
And, in low-range, 500 Nm will conquer any gradient you dare to steer into. Need better overtaking performance or more power for sand driving? Choose the Quartermaster turbopetrol, with 210 kW.
Indeed, the fantasy double cab does exist
The Quartermaster’s pricing is beyond anything the South African bakkie market has seen before. Where the flagship X-Class triggered debates about “the R1-million-plus bakkie”, the Quartermaster will spark discussions around “the R2-million-plus bakkie”. It is a terrific statement vehicle to own and South Africans have a proven market response to expensive bakkies – and that is to buy, instead of resist.
A decade ago, if you gave bakkie fans an open specification to create their ultimate double-cab bakkie, not even the most ambitious minds would have imagined 3-lockers, legacy Defender styling, and BMW 6-cylinder turbodiesel power. But that happened in a meeting room at Ineos headquarters in 2017.
Seven years later, a British company markets the ultimate double-cab bakkie, powered by an iconic German engine and built in France. Who would have guessed South Africa’s most compelling and exciting double cab would be so… European?
The Quartermaster’s very existence also makes you wonder how Mercedes-Benz got it so wrong with the X-Class, despite having vastly more resources than Ineos for the planning and development of its double cab. Imagine if Ineos applied the Quartermaster approach to something Toyota Hilux-sized!
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