A prototype of the retro off-road vehicle Ineos Grenadier will attempt to face a truly demanding desert challenge. The creature of Ineos, the oil giant, will travel along the so-called Canning Stock Route in Western Australia, developed in the early twentieth century to drive cattle; the route covers three different deserts and is 1850 kilometers long. This is a good proving ground for a 4 × 4 vehicle not only because of the rough terrain, but also because of the limited availability of supplies.
The news of the adventure trip was given by the CEO of Ineos himself, Dirk Heilmann, on social media. “We have a prototype in Australia and we will tackle the Canning Stock Route with the final prototype around May / June this year“, He wrote in an Instagram post. For Ineos Grenadier, this is a good way to find any remaining defects before production starts in Hambach, by the end of 2022. This is not the first time the off-road vehicle has crossed a desert; in the cover photo you can see him busy in the dunes of Morocco. But this time it will be different, for sure.
The Canning Stock Route stretches from Halls Creek in the north-central part of the country to Wiluna in the west-central part. The drive route passes through parts of the Great Sandy Desert, Gibson Desert and Little Sandy Desert. The route had been used from the 1920s until the late 1950s. Regarded as one of the most demanding off-road routes in the world, it usually takes two to three weeks to cover it from top to bottom in a 4 × 4 vehicle, also due to the presence of only two small villages equipped with a fuel and water pump. Its toughness is proverbial: just think that in 2011 six out of seven Mercedes G-Classes, engaged in a test, suffered a shock absorber failure after a week of travel.
The Australian expedition will close the circle for testing the car strongly desired by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, after the routes covered in Morocco, Sweden, Death Valley (United States) and the Austrian mountains.
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