Picked Clean: 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser Skeletonized By Junkyard Vultures

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Toyota Land Cruisers don’t last long in self-service wrecking yards, as we saw with this ’85 earlier in the summer. When I saw this ’71 FJ40 a few weeks later, I could see the scavengers circling overhead. Now look at it!

All the easy-and-valuable goodies had been grabbed during the several days between being placed on the yard and my first series of photographs, but I knew that some portable-Sawzall-armed customer would want the sheet metal.

Sure enough, that’s what happened.

The Chevy-based six in these trucks is pretty hard to kill and good-running examples are plentiful, so I’m guessing this engine will go to The Crusher with whatever fragments remain of the truck.





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.

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  • Roberto Esponja Roberto Esponja on Aug 12, 2012

    Why in the world would you just chop off 3/4 of the top half? Crazy...

    • See 1 previous
    • Scoutdude Scoutdude on Aug 15, 2012

      Yup it bolts together and once it was unbolted so it could be moved then in the normal self server pay one price system it became multiple pieces that were priced accordingly so they only bought what they needed.

  • Bill mcgee Bill mcgee on Aug 13, 2012

    Always thought it was a missed opportunity for Toyota that they brought out the current FJ as such a bloated vehicle with a mile-wide blind spot instead of bringing in something closer in size to this version , which would have helped fuel economy and handling , presumably .

    • Amx1972 Amx1972 on Aug 14, 2012

      Agreed. I would like to see the FJ Cruiser as more of a direct Jeep competitor. Hell just import the 70 series cruiser and I would be in the Toyata Dealer tommorow. And don't talk to me about the current monstrosity that wears the Land Cruiser badge.

  • Ajla I don't know if it is my driving style or the tuning or cognitive bias but these turbo-4s never feel as strong as their published output.
  • Tylanner Same engine across a $30,000 trim range is INSANE. It just shows how exploitative and arbitrary the pricing scheme is…
  • Ajla Like how a Miata is more fun if you frequently drive on twisty roads I think the more often you can get off pavement the better the WRX gets.
  • FreedMike Suggested use for the one year delay: de-uglify it.
  • MaintenanceCosts How strong is the second power stroke as a percentage of the strength of the first?
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