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It defies logic that “primitive” should mean “more expensive,” but when it comes to new cars in 2025, that’s pretty much how things shake out. The Ineos Grenadier is a perfect example of this phenomenon—explicitly designed around old-school technology, yet somehow costs more than a high-performance EV with the latest everything. Here’s a deep look at why that is, and how it came to be that way.
This video is a little bit of a Grenadier review, but it’s really more of a comprehensive, contextual breakdown about how the truck came into existence and why it costs what it does. And we’re not just talking about the British billionaire who simply had to have a new version of the old Land Rover Defender—our deep-dive gets all the way into the economics of multi-car families and the death of specialized vehicles.
At the shallowest level of analysis, it looks like emissions and crash regulations are the main forces making it impossible to sell something like an old-school Defender or 70-Series Toyota Land Cruiser in the U.S. at scale. Almost everything on the market today is, or at least looks and feels like, a softer version of its predecessors. The rise of crossover SUVs can also be tied to the death of the second (or third) family car. All these ideas are linked, and all factor into the complex web of today’s car market.
The sticker price of every car is a lot higher than it was years and decades ago, but broadly speaking, vehicle prices have stayed largely consistent with inflation. In fact, as far as efficiency, safety, reliability, features, and performance go, you’re getting a lot more for your money now than you ever did at a dealership back in the day.
Unfortunately, the buying power of many Americans’ take-home pay has not kept up. While your dad might have been able to buy a midlife-crisis Corvette on a lark in the ’90s, people don’t really shop for cars like that anymore. Now, everything has to be everything—even when buyers can afford a highline car, many would rather buy a BMW X5 M than a lower-tier X5 and an M2.
Hence, the rapidly shrinking market of cars that are both purely mission-focused and affordable. The Mazda Miata is almost the last example in the American market.
Highly specialized vehicles can still exist, but as we’re seeing with the Grenadier, when they can only be made in small batches, they are not going to be cheap.
Start the video and stick with it—you’ll learn a little bit about Ineos and a lot about the state of automotive economics.
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