We do have a problem with the Ratcliffe Grenadier. It is lacking in originality and harking back to a time when only a few could actually afford the cost of muckraking into the wilderness and failing to return home because the dam thing broke down. Again. The Ratcliffe Grenadier is a vanity project built by and for an out-of-touch billionaire. Above all, it is a blatant facsimile of the legendary and unreliable Land Rover Defender. I put it to you, that if a Chinese company had done exactly the same how would the British motoring media react? With professional outrage, and they would probably call out the Chinese for lacking culture and heritage, thieves who have stolen technology and badly reverse-engineered a Land Rover clone.

The Chinese culture is not lacking, nor is Chinese heritage in short supply. While our early ancestors here in England were rolling around and shivering inside smoke-filled mud houses, the Chinese had a dynastic civilization. But modern 21st Century China did copy the Range Rover Evoque in the form of the Landwind X7. And of course, it was met with derision by the British media at large.

So what is different about the Ratcliffe Grenadier Defender clone? Why is the British media so accepting of it and unquestioningly loyal to its billionaire owner, Jim Ratcliffe? Why has this disconnect between the Landwind X7 and Ratcliffe Grenadier happened? I can reveal why. It’s simply about the chumocracy. It’s about access journalism. It’s about being the first to post that review, be it on YouTube or in the written media.

In the end, this is no longer journalism it is parroting corporate propaganda. That being said, Henry ‘Jones Jr’ Catchpole is one of the few motoring journalists who has any sense of any integrity. He is genuinely interested in the engineering behind the Ratcliffe, but even Henry has a job to do.