Hertz Just Added the Wildest Truck You Can Rent at the Airport
Carroll Shelby put a race car in Hertz's rental fleet in 1966, and America never forgot it.
Now, sixty years later, Hertz just did something equally unexpected – and this time it rolls on solid axles, locks three differentials, and was built specifically to go places most vehicles have no business trying.
Starting this spring, you can walk up to a Hertz counter at select airports and drive away in an INEOS Grenadier.
The INEOS Grenadier and the Land Rover Defender Legacy It Refused to Let Die
The original Land Rover Defender was one of the most beloved off-road vehicles ever built – the choice of farmers, soldiers, and adventurers across the globe for decades.
Land Rover killed it in 2016.
British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe wanted to buy the tooling and keep it alive. Jaguar Land Rover said no.
So he built his own.
Ratcliffe founded INEOS Automotive and launched the Grenadier in 2022 – a body-on-frame, solid-axle, mechanically locked 4×4 powered by a BMW inline-six, designed from scratch to fill the gap the original Defender left behind. He named it after his favorite pub in London, where the idea was born.
The Grenadier is unapologetic. Triple locking differentials. Permanent four-wheel drive. Hydraulically assisted recirculating ball steering. A transfer case you operate with an actual lever. No terrain response computer to hold your hand – just mechanical hardware and driver skill.
Land Rover moved on. Ratcliffe refused to.
How the Hertz Grenadier Rental Program Works
Every Grenadier in the Hertz fleet is a Fieldmaster – near the top of the lineup, with leather upholstery, heated seats, safari windows, a premium sound system, and 18-inch alloy wheels. Sticker price on a new one: $79,000.
Hertz is placing them at 21 U.S. airport locations this spring, available to drivers 25 and older, starting around $100 a day.
That's a $79,000 hardcore 4×4 for roughly the price of a mid-range hotel room.
The partnership also matters strategically for INEOS. The company has faced serious headwinds in America – tariffs have pushed the Grenadier's effective price close to six figures, and U.S. registrations dropped 14 percent through the first half of last year. Getting the truck in front of travelers at airports across the country is the kind of exposure that moves the needle when advertising hasn't.
Hertz knows how this works. The Shelby GT350H didn't just make history – it helped sell cars by putting them in front of people who would never have walked into a dealership. The Grenadier partnership follows the same playbook: let the product make the case.
What Makes the INEOS Grenadier a Different Kind of 4×4
The modern wave of off-road vehicles – including the new Land Rover Defender – runs on independent suspension, electronic traction systems, and terrain response software that handles the hard parts for you. Comfortable, capable enough for most buyers, and in a certain sense dishonest: they look tough while hiding the complexity behind a touchscreen.
The Grenadier doesn't work that way. The beam axles are real. The locking diffs are mechanical. The transfer case lever is physical. Getting it through serious terrain requires actual driver input, not a menu selection.
The trade-off is the road experience – it's not a car you'd want to drive from Dallas to Denver for the fun of it. That was never the point. The point was the trail on Saturday morning when conditions turn and the guys in the Defender SE with the panoramic sunroof head back to the trailhead.
The Grenadier keeps going.
One honest caveat for renters: Hertz has confirmed the vehicles cannot be driven off-road under the rental agreement. The most capable truck in their fleet will spend its time on pavement – but it will be the most talked-about vehicle in every airport parking garage from Atlanta to Denver, and that's precisely the idea.
America's greatest rental car partnership started in 1966 with Carroll Shelby and a race-prepped Mustang. Sixty years later, a British billionaire who refused to let a great truck die just gave that tradition its most interesting new chapter.
Go find one before they're gone.
Sources:
- Stephen Rivers, "Hertz Just Made Airport Rentals A Lot More Interesting," Carscoops, March 18, 2026.
- "The Totally Not A G-Class Ineos Grenadier Is Officially A Rental Vehicle," CarBuzz, March 2026.
- "Ineos Has Proven That People Never Wanted A Brand-New Old-Defender," CarBuzz, September 12, 2025.
- "Ineos Might Be On The Way Out, and That's a Shame," Autoblog, December 1, 2025.
- "Ineos Cuts Prices Across The Board To Juice Disappointing Sales Numbers," Yahoo Autos/Jalopnik, August 28, 2025.
- "The Greatest Rental Car In History: The Shelby GT350H 'Rent-A-Racer,'" Silodrome, March 20, 2023.
- Ineos Grenadier entry, Wikipedia, March 2026.
