In one of the promo videos, Ratcliff, he's behind the wheel of his Defender in this sequence, talks about on road drivability. He "concedes" that it has to be comfortable for on road use.
He also talks about selling Grenadiers to people in fields, and other, unconventional, locations. I can only assume that means a direct to consumer sales route, with fewer, if any, show rooms.
But then where do you take your Grenadier for repairs?
I contend that it needs to be much more than comfortable.
If it can't handle, if it can't keep up with traffic, and if it isn't progressive at the limit, it's simply obsolete at this point, or a bad vehicle entirely. The traffic you encounter in remote civilization combined with road conditions and a lack of safety considerations mandate much more than what's being sold.
Everyone loves an old Series, but it's from a bygone era when relatively modern vehicles weren't seen in under-developed nations. Those who rely on them out there simply can't afford anything more effective. People here should know better, and should spend their first-world money properly.
You're going to be out there on broken paths
literally maintained by a yearly bulldozer, at night, in slippery conditions, facing down commercial transport without lights, and in some areas you're frequently on the side of a damned mountain. That thing had better be able to maintain stability.
When you're pulling around 50mph slaloming around holes that would swallow a Fiat for a hundred miles on snotty post-rain dust, park the Jeep. Just fucking park the thing and forget about it. It's not good enough. The same goes for long stretches of washboard when you are unable to match the frequency. You're skipping all over the place, and that rig should be able to handle it.
This is also where mismatching suspension technologies fails you, and where overall vehicle balance is critical. This is also why I'm extremely picky about lateral bolstering on tires, as well as retreads on long journeys in the middle of nowhere. It can be the difference between a tombstone and a Tusker.
This guy seems to have figured out how to handle Land Rover as a company, but I am seriously beginning to question whether he has any business building a car. I'm predicting a "kit car" level build, here. I don't know who he's planning on selling to, but it's not going to work out the way he thinks it will. He can slap conventional parts on it such as Mopar axles and GM power trains (or whatever his local equivalent is; I don't know where the bugger lives), but all he's done is build something twenty other companies can't sell in great numbers.
So, service doesn't necessarily have to be difficult, but if it's nothing special at all, why not just re-power an imported Defender for a quarter the inevitable price all-in? It's fucking stupid to make yet another vehicle that will automatically be eclipsed by side-by-sides before the first unit is even delivered. These vehicles are "why tech". They serve little purpose when better options are available for ten grand or less.
One could try and make an excuse by calling it a "trail rig", but trailering something to a trail that costs as much as a new car is not a good business model, and only shows that he doesn't understand his customer base any more than Toyota understood the people who were salivating over the new Supra before it was revealed.
Unless that thing is equipped to run farm machinery right out of the gate, and is cheap enough for developing nations, I don't see the point of it.
Cheers,
Kennith