Billionaire businessman Jim Ratcliffe wants to launch Britain’s biggest independent car company, building “uncompromising off-roaders” that can take over where the Land Rover Defender left off.

The founder of chemicals giant Ineos wants to produce a “rugged offroader, which is unbreakable, go anywhere and does not have the reliability problems of the Defender” and is “100pc not a Chelsea tractor”.

Mr Ratcliffe is a fan of the now discontinued Land Rover Defender, which went out of production in 2016, and said he wants to create a car that fills its gap in the market - something he believes Jaguar Land Rover will not do when it launches a new version of the car in two years' time.