Grenadier Replaces Defender at Scottish Lifeboat Station

If you find yourself on the British coast, you’ll eventually come across a lifeboat station -- a charitable organization providing coastal rescue services. One of the most beloved icons of British culture, the lifeboat stations have also been nostalgically tied to their Defenders and Series vehicles for decades. Used as launch vehicles and search and rescue trucks, they’re a piece of the British seascape. But almost eight years after the last classic Defender rolled off the line, the march of time means other vehicles are taking their place – and on the coast of southwest Scotland, that vehicle is an Ineos Grenadier.

The Grenadier replaces the Nith Inshore Rescue station’s old 2004 Defender 110. The Defender was itself twenty years old, a 2004 Td5 station wagon. As the time came to replace it, the options were thin. A vehicle has to be durable, have a high towing capacity, and be easy to repair. While the new Defender isn’t necessarily disqualified for this use – it’s already found many rescue uses around the world – Nith Inshore Rescue decided the Grenadier was the best fit for them.

Nith Inshore Rescue works in the Southwest of Scotland, south of Dumfries in and around the River Nith, and in the highly dangerous Solway Firth between Scotland and England. They're one of the busiest lifeboat stations in Scotland, founded in 1981 after a local man drowned. They work with sea- and land-focused agencies to be part of a broad-based emergency response in the area.

The Grenadier is the first in the world to be pressed into first responder service. Kitted out with snorkel, roof rack, traction boards, emergency lights, and iconic British “Battenberg” fluorescent reflective livery, it plays every part of the role of a lifeboat vehicle. Nith Inshore Rescue is an independent lifeboat service, separate from the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) that runs the majority of British lifeboat stations. So instead of the RNLI’s iconic dark blue paint job, the Nith vehicle rocks a white paint job with the Battenberg decals.

The vehicle has already hit the road for multiple calls, peppering the images of Nith Inshore Rescue’s work on their Facebook page.

Since the Grenadier started hitting roads about a year ago, it’s started filling in some of the niches that the old Defender satisfied. While many agencies and customers are perfectly happy with the new Defender’s capability and functionality, there are others that prefer the Grenadier’s structure. Though it is a body-on-frame vehicle, unlike the new Defender’s unibody, it does not have the structural flexibility of the old Defender. If you buy a station wagon, you’re stuck with a wagon forever; buy the new Quartermaster pickup truck, and it’s always going to be a pickup. No roof swapping, unbolting sides, or bulkhead adaptations; the Grenadier is a pre-formed body cage like an early Range Rover or Discovery, bolted to a frame. That ladder frame is all that some agencies need, however, including lifeboat agencies who will be dunking the rear end of the vehicle in salt water repeatedly for the next two decades and need a platform that’s easier to weld back together.

Nith’s old Defender didn’t go quietly into the night, though. For all its twenty years of service, the 110 only racked up 16,826 miles. Put up for auction online, it netted an even £22,000 for the lifeboat station – a good dent in the £64,500 base price of a new utility-spec Grenadier.

Meanwhile, many classic Defenders continue to ply the British coast, working lifeboat stations from Scilly to Shetland. In the few years since the end of production, stations have experimented with replacing Defenders with pickup trucks like the Ford Ranger or Mitsubishi L200, or smaller body-on-frame SUVs like the Suzuki Jimny. The Grenadier will now offer a more direct replacement, and this will likely not be the only one to staff a lifeboat station. The lifeboat-hauling classic Defender has been a British icon for decades – the RNLI even sells models of blue Defenders hooked to rescue boat trailers – but like the Routemaster bus, the Concorde, and the QE2, the day is coming that it joins the archive of British transport icons.