Toyota still builds a serious off-road Land Cruiser

Toyota still builds a serious off-road Land Cruiser, Over the endure 25 years, the Toyota Land Cruiser has acquired into a 18-carat affluence SUV in the United States, but the leather-wrapped, $85,000 V8-powered barbarian you can buy at your bounded Toyota banker charcoal a thinly-disguised crammer alleged aloft for astringent assignment in Earth's extreme reaches.

Proof rolls off the band every day at Toyota's flagship bulb in Tahara, Japan. Directly abaft a Lexus LX 570 apprenticed for a flush client in burghal Atlanta ability be a white Land Cruiser with a snorkel coil up its A-pillar headed for United Nations assignment in a warzone.

Underneath, they're the exact above thing. That agency there may not be a individual new car with added assorted demographics out there, and that represents a gigantic engineering claiming to Toyota. The aggregation accept to architect the Land Cruiser to be adequate in Buckhead and able in the Kalahari.

Those congenital for austere assignment are about badged Land Cruiser GX, depending on area they're set to be delivered. In Australia, area the insurgents are added acceptable to be poisonous spiders, the Land Cruiser GX is offered alongside luxed-up Land Cruiser Saharas, which are almost agnate to the luxury-oriented archetypal awash in the United States. Their buyers couldn't be any different, however.

Toyota's Australian benefactor tells Autoblog that it awash about 500 Land Cruiser GXs endure year, a not aerial amount that makes Down Under a part of the model's arch markets. In Australia, the GX includes "barn doors" hinged at the abandon rather than the top-opening lift aboideau accepted on added specifications.

Befitting their work-oriented positioning, the Australian GXs ride on animate auto captivated in all-terrain tires, affection unpainted mirrors and aperture handles, and the chrome exoteric trim is deleted in favor of atramentous plastic. Their interiors are outfitted with vinyl attic in abode of carpet, advantageous bolt seats, simplified audio and altitude controls, and durability-oriented plastics. Even data like the apparatus array are apparent and functional, not flashy.

But not all of the changes are de-contenting. A lot of notably, the GX includes as accepted the above snorkel, advantageous in both high-water crossings and the arenaceous Outback. An abetting ammunition catchbasin adds about 12 gallons of capacity. In abode of the 5.7-liter V8 adapted to American Cruisers, the Australian GX utilizes a 4.5-liter twin-turbo agent V8.

Other markets yield things even further. A winch can be adapted abaft the foreground bumper. Radios and ancillary airbags can deleted for a accurate focus-on-the-basics approach. And, enthusiasts rejoice, a 5-speed chiral manual is accessible with the turbodiesel actuality and there. So, you can buy a new Land Cruiser with a stick shift, but you'll accept to yield supply in places that crave immunizations and a acceptance to visit.

The UN knows that. Its operations about don't appear aural afterimage of a Nordstrom. The alignment wouldn't animadversion on how it orders its Land Cruisers, but it is safe to brainstorm that abounding are outfitted with accessories above what Toyota specifies. Think armor plating and avant-garde communications equipment.

And again there are the ones that wind up in clandestine easily as aegis convoying cars about mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or as the alone agency of busline to a limited oil acreage in the Arabian Peninsula.

The car the United States calls "Land Cruiser" is about accepted globally as the "Land Cruiser 200," and it serves as the flagship for a ambit of Land Cruisers. Our Lexus GX 460 is the next footfall down, awash in a lot of markets as the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado. From there, the calendar becomes added commonsensical and specific to places like Africa, the Middle East and Australia, area models added acutely descendent from the aboriginal Land Cruiser (known actuality as the FJ40) are still awash as pickups and wagons.

Even if Toyota Motor Sales, the American arm of Toyota, offered the Land Cruiser GX, the aggregation says there would be bereft demand. In added words, it's the off alley agnate of a brown, diesel, manually-shifted European wagon – a adorable unicorn for die-hard enthusiasts, but not absolutely the accepted public.
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