Junkyard Find: 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

While the regular junkyard visitor might run across the occasional FJ60 Land Cruiser in a cheap self-service yard, especially here in 4WD-centric Colorado, there are some Toyota trucks you just don’t see in such junkyards. One is the 4Runner (I’ve found exactly one so far) and another is the FJ40 Land Cruiser. But wait— look what I just found!

I shot this truck in the yard’s “not ready for customers to be pickin’ parts off yet” lot a couple of months back, and I assumed that it would be sold as a unit to a Toyota-specialist yard or collector instead of getting put out among the ’93 Tercels and Daewoo Lanoses. It looked pretty rough, but still had plenty of good stuff.

By the time I found it in the yard, it had been picked over pretty well.

Still, there’s always something worth pulling if you’re restoring a much-sought-after FJ40.

Like the glovebox door, for example, or what Land Cruiser folks call “the pocket.”


Holds seven in foam-seat comfort!










Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

More by Murilee Martin

Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 17 comments
  • Katherin1 Katherin1 on Oct 08, 2013

    Great writeup.

  • Katherin1 Katherin1 on Oct 08, 2013

    Great writeup. We like FJ60 Land Cruiser . It has good quality driving, interior and exteriors looks good. It is really good stuff. I have driven cruiser . Although i have faced some engine problem and fixed it Auto Repair Tempe . We are fan of Toyota.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
Next