Toyata land cruiser industrial revolution

If you want to start a very specific fight with people on the internet, then you merely have to deal in absolutes. Something like “The 70 Series is peak Toyota Land Cruiser” will do it. Then you just sit back and watch the digital world eat itself with all the empathy of a recently fired bullet. But while the refreshed 70 Series Toyota is making for some markets is a remix of an old favourite (literally a 70 Series with LED headlights and added Apple CarPlay), the company has also delivered on new material. And in terms of sweet spots, it looks like it hits quite a few. Land Rover Defender and Ineos Grenadier customers prepare to be irritated – there will a new king in town in 2024 and it’s called the Toyota Land Cruiser 250.

Now there’s something to be said for creative differences, but the TopGear hive mind generally disagrees with itself, not on purpose but principle – devil’s advocacy being an unpaid hobby for most of us. But the Land Cruiser 250 was met with almost universal praise. People really like the way this thing looks, a kind of serious faced older sibling of the FJ Cruiser from 2006, which itself shares some underpinnings with the old 4Runner and Land Cruiser Prado. And it’s a difficult one, because ‘design’ is a concept broader than morality, more subjective than flavour. Newness can be jarring, but pull too hard on your heritage heartstrings and you can drown in pastiche – an easy trap with the Land Cruiser’s 10-plus generations and a family tree that stretches back to 1958.

But what remains, what has always been a cornerstone of Land Cruiser-ness, is a kind of big-bodied solidity. A generous chunk of utility and strength. And the 250 is shot through with the kind of design that makes you think of blocks of stone, military hardware and calm capability. The project’s chief designer Yoshito Watanabe said that the theme was “Back to origins with new values” – and “reliable, timeless and professional” – and you can see where he’s coming from. There’s a pleasing bluntness to the design, without straying into the caricature of something such as the semi-mythical Tesla Cybertruck. Oddly, in a bold move, Toyota has also decided to offer two different faces depending on the variant – round headlights for £65k base ‘Land Cruiser 1958’ and First Edition models, sterner rectangular headlights for the others. The rounder