BMW-Powered Land Rover Defender Snapped For The First Time

The Land Rover Defender is an iconic off-roader that boasts of excellent off-roading capabilities to go anywhere. It has been around the markets for quite a long time. For some people, however, the latest-gen Land Rover Defender is not exactly a perfect replacement for the previous one as it seems to have lost its original traits. That said, the latest Defender is now more refined and luxurious, therefore making it a luxury urban car instead of a simplistic workhorse that loved to be splashed over in dirt and mud.

To carry over the spirit of the original Land Rover Defender, Ineos, a privately owned UK chemical company has come up with a successor to the Defender, named the Projekt Grenadier, which has been spotted on test in recent times.

Ineos is new enterant in the automobile business. It entered the automotive space in 2017 and announced its first project, the “Projekt Grenadier”. However, it is now that the project is eventually in its final phase. The spy shots of the Projekt Grenadier test mules were captured near Magna Steyr's manufacturing facility in Austria. Magna Steyr is Ineos’s partner in this project and will be taking care of major development of the car. Note that it is the same company that manufactured first and second-gen Mercedes G-Glass as well as developed Mercedes’s AWD system.

The Ineos Defender will get its power from a BMW-sourced B58 inline-six-cylinder turbocharged engine that might give us a slight reminiscent to the original LR Defender. Notably, when Land Rover was under the control of BMW, the Defender was offered with an M52 straight-six engine option. Reports revealed that the market launch of the Projekt Grenadier would take place in early next year. However, it highly unlikely that it Ineos Defender will make its way to the Indian soil.