Space-age Marketing: Toyota Names Moon Rover After Land Cruiser

If you hadn’t heard, Toyota has pitched a lunar rover to serve as a vehicle for an upcoming international moon mission led by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and supported by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) — among other extra-planetary organizations. Conceptualized last year, the six-wheeled dune hopper offers more creature comforts than the original Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) produced by Boeing and General Motors’ Defense Research Laboratories decades ago.

But it needed a name, and Toyota figured it might as well find something fitting that also helped it market products here on Earth (assuming it’s chosen for the mission). Fortunately, the brand’s history includes a vehicle that’s known to be so reliable and adept at traversing unforgiving terrain that it’s become internationally famous for it: the Land Cruiser.

Announcing its decision Friday, Toyota said it wants the moon buggy to be named “Lunar Cruiser.” The automaker didn’t omit mentioning the obvious connection to its own SUV.

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Lexus Adds More Off-Road Capability and More Ugly to 2020 GX 460

Just because the Lexus GX 460 rarely goes off-road, doesn’t mean it can’t. Despite the fact that most GXs prowl suburban malls, Lexus is still working to bolster its boulder-bashing bonafides.

The 2020 Lexus GX 460 will be available with an Off-Road Package with Multi-Terrain Select. Available on the top-level Luxury Grade model, this package should help with all that off-roading that Lexus owners are apparently known to do. This system combines surface-selectable traction- and stability-control modes with the Panoramic View and Multi-Terrain Monitors, all but negating the need for a spotter when doing some hardcore rock crawling.

Lexus is taking existing developed systems and technologies and incorporating them into the GX platform.

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Rare Rides: Patrol the Desert in This 1989 Nissan Safari

The Patrol has forever been Nissan’s answer to the Toyota Land Cruiser, as both brands compete for rough and tumble SUV customers. Today’s Rare Ride represents just how many creature comforts can be added to a go-anywhere truck.

Presenting the Nissan Safari from 1989.

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Sixty Years in the Biz: 2020 Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Edition

Eager to celebrate the Land Cruiser’s 60th birthday (in America), Toyota has released preliminary details on the 2020 model year’s Heritage Edition before its official debut at the Chicago Auto Show. While technically an appearance package with a handful of retro-themed clues hinting at the model’s lengthy lifespan, it’s one of the more endearing makeovers in recent times.

Suckers for nostalgia will love the vintage-looking Land Cruiser badge on the SUV’s D-pillars. But the limited-production model also comes with bronze 18-inch BBS wheels with some throwback charms of their own. Heritage Editions also receive widespread black accenting on the exterior and nixed running boards for a cleaner look.

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Junkyard Find: 1974 Toyota Land Cruiser

The Toyota Land Cruiser has been around since the Sengoku Period (OK, since 1951), and all varieties of this truck tend to have plenty of obsessively devoted single-interest fanatics here in Colorado. You’ll see the occasional FJ60 Land Cruiser in junkyards here, and I’ve even seen a well-stripped FJ40 in a Denver yard. Today’s well-thrashed Junkyard Find is the first example of an FJ55 Land Cruiser I’ve found.

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Four Weeks in Africa With the Land Rover Defender

After 67 years, production of the iconic Land Rover Defender ends today. It’s an amazing feat that the Defender has lasted this long. It was a utilitarian vehicle developed at a time when going off-roading meant just going. It helped Europe rebuild after World War II. And it explored Africa, where often the Land Rover was the first automobile ever seen by locals. It continued that way for years, undergoing constant but slow evolution, rather than complete revolution.

Until today.

Rather than boring everyone with interesting quasi-factual trivia about Land Rover’s most iconic model, I’ll bore you with my own personal experiences.

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Why Is The Most Popular Truck in the Middle East Used by Terrorists?

(Probably because it’s the most popular truck.)

Automotive News reported that Toyota is cooperating with U.S. authorities in uncovering why members of the terrorist group ISIS seem to be so fond of Toyota Hiluxes and Land Cruisers, which consistently rank among the top 5 best-selling vehicles for many Middle Eastern countries, prompted by an investigation* by ABC News.

The automaker said the company forbids directly selling cars to paramilitary or terrorist organizations because of course it does. The company said it would be impossible to control indirect or illegal sales to terrorist organizations because of course it is.

ABC News hasn’t reached out to Ford to see how it controls sales of F-150 trucks to American drug cartels.

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Toyota Confirms New Land Cruiser for US

Toyota’s facelifted Land Cruiser will reach American shores, the automaker confirmed Tuesday. Toyota lifted the cover off the SUV yesterday in Japan and we reported that Toyota would tell us the same today.

(Oi. We should have stretched before patting ourselves on the back like that.)

The updated Land Cruiser will still sport a 5.7-liter V-8 that produces 381 horsepower and 401 pound-feet of torque. The engine will now be married to Toyota’s eight-speed automatic (the first Toyota-branded vehicle on our shores to use the gearbox) but oddly, mileage doesn’t improve beyond 13 mpg city/18 mpg highway/15 mpg combined, which were the numbers for this year’s six-speed box.

Toyota’s announcement also includes one of the best lines in press release history:

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Japan Gets a New Toyota Land Cruiser, Ours May Come Soon

Toyota announced its updated Land Cruiser in Japan today, with a starting price of $38,000 (!?) for the off-roading legend.

The seven-seater over there serves as the base for our Lexus LX over here, which was unveiled over the weekend in California alongside the turbo’d Lexus GS, and our version has all the grille.

Based on initial reception of the LX, when will we get the new Land Cruiser?

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Junkyard Find: 1982 Toyota Land Cruiser

The FJ60 Land Cruiser is still a common sight on the streets of Denver, where I live. These things are not anywhere near as comfortable or fuel-efficient as modern SUVs, but they are just about impossible to kill… and that counts for a lot with your FJ-driving demographic around these parts. Being so prized, however, means that you don’t see many of these trucks in high-turnover self-service wrecking yards, and when you do see one it tends to get picked clean in a hurry. I went to a local yard on a typically freezing-ass Half Price Day sale last week and spotted this remarkably un-stripped ’82.

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Insert Requisite Quote About Flexing From Long Beach To Texas Here

Obviously this isn’t the new Lexus GX460. Obviously. You know that because there’s no Predator grille up front. This is actually the 2014 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado. Talk about being visually challenged. It looks sort of like a developmentally handicapped chipmunk. But if you’d like to see the Lexus GX460, that’s fine too. I just kind of wanted to ease you in to the whole thing. Are you ready? Okay, one… two… three…

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Hammer Time: Ramblings Of An Aspiring Kibbutznik

I must have been a kibbutznik in a past life. Whenever I buy something of value, I never have the urge to keep it for myself.

Perhaps it’s due to too many bouts of suburbia. A neighborhood with twenty lawnmowers. Thirty The Lion King videos, and fifty to seventy vehicles. All this redundancy seems to be a bit much for a guy who hates to see things unused by my family 98+% of the time.

Yeah. I know that most folks aren’t willing to share their ride. Some won’t even loan you Simba. But if I lived in a place where we all put a smaller chunk of our change into a ride, I wouldn’t go cheap . . . except for possibly an old Volvo wagon.

These would be my top picks. All used of course!

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Picked Clean: 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser Skeletonized By Junkyard Vultures

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!

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Junkyard Find: 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser

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!

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Junkyard Find: 1985 Toyota Land Cruiser

The Land Cruiser is one of those vehicles that washes up in self-service junkyards only after its body and interior become so thrashed that even bottom-feeder truck shoppers can’t stand the idea of being seen in the thing. Contrast this with the legions of great-looking 1980s Jaguars you’ll find in the very same yards.

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  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • 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.