My opinion only is that JLR sales alone from the last years of Defender were not enough for them to make money to carry the legacy forward; did business model effect this at some point; YEP! As much as people think it's cheap to just build a line and hope it sells, it really is not a business model to follow. Can't say JLR business model is an example to follow, just saying that look how much it costs to run a separate line on a specific vehicle; almost every manufacturer is using multiple components on multiple vehicles......JLR included. Ford is one of the best examples of a company that saw failure on the business plan with too many model vehicles sucking up too much bandwidth with little return; they have models like F150 and up on trucks and SUV that make money and the rest just break even or loss sucking from profits from selling models. They broke it down, retooled discontinued model lines to build more of what sells and it is working.
Another example of what Chrysler did with all of their niche model vehicles and only a few like Charger, Challenger made the cut but the rest sucked money and bandwidth and would never be survivable. They had all these crazy niche vehicles that were just money pits of production lines with little return.
Not saying it was the right or wrong answer as I do not know; could they have just kept the legacy Defender line running; I'm sure yes but as Grenadier has stated it was a bottom up redesign to meet global specs (Defender never was except a few years) and I guess somewhere along the line those that make the decision said get rid of it and just make a new one that meets modern demand of SUV w/utility vs Grenadier who started bottom up from Utility and may draw some SUV market as well.
Grenadier is still a niche market no matter how you sell it; I love it and if the price remains as stated, they get my order if the support structure lines up. I do feel they have the potential if they can produce the numbers to pull from a lot of markets out there such as LC and Jeep.
If JLR did what Grenadier did, would the Defender sell; yes, I just do not know if it would have sold in the global numbers under utility that they needed to make it worth while in the end.
Not saying my logic is right, I think Ineos nailed it but they are a long way away to see if global numbers on official orders and profit to say was it worth it for JLR or anyone without significant risk to do the same thing in their eyes.
Time will tell I guess. Best I can answer but not sure anyone cares as long as they can point to a JLR didn't and Ineos did to sleep at night.
