Ineos is planning a significant shift upmarket, with a focus on boutique off-roaders to rival the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, instead of trying to grow both its line-up and sales.

By pivoting to focus on its new Arcane Works programme – Ineos’s take on Land Rover SV and Bentley Mulliner – the brand will be able to target similar margins while making fewer vehicles as it looks to battle against increasingly stringent emissions regulations in the UK and across Europe.

“The main feedback from dealers is that the Grenadier is too cheap – it needs to be more expensive for the amount of car you get,” George Ratcliffe, commercial director of Ineos, told Autocar. “They want to sell it for more.”

This pivot is a far cry from the brand’s initial plan, which, along with the Grenadier and its Arcane Works siblings, originally included a Jeep Avenger-sized small urban model and the electric Fusilier, revealed earlier this year but now indefinitely postponed.

“What we wanted to achieve is no longer possible,” said Ratcliffe. “When the Grenadier project started, what we said was: ‘We’re going to build a really affordable, easy-to-fix utilitarian vehicle that will be good for farmers.’ It’s a gap in the market. But with the modern world and what you need – engines, pedestrian protection rules, CO2 emissions, regulation on vehicles – you cannot do that any more.”

Ratcliffe also warned that limiting sales in certain markets, such as the UK, with its strict ZEV mandate, has not been ruled out. That mandate forces car makers to sell an increasing ratio of electric cars each year from 2024 onwards, but it exempts those that sell fewer than 2500 cars annually. Ineos delivered 146 cars and 178 commercial vehicles in the UK in the first half of this year.

Fleet CO2 targets were another reason cited for the Fusilier’s postponement. Ratcliffe said projected sales would have taken the firm over the threshold of being a ‘small’ manufacturer – fewer than 10,000 cars or 22,000 vans sold annually – with the dispensation to propose its own emissions targets.

“Without having [Fusilier] we have a bit more flexibility because we have a bit more capacity to sell up to being a small manufacturer and it doesn’t matter if you’re selling a petrol, diesel or electric car,” said Ratcliffe. “By selling fewer electric cars we can sell more Grenadiers and still keep the same CO2 cap. But when we want to punch through that, we have to have something that brings our average down.”