#TJCruiser

Toyota’s FJ Cruiser was big and brash — a gas-sucking, body-on frame bruiser that combined rugged off-road capability and distinctive looks with a clamshell door configuration that gives this writer goosebumps. While owners continue to enjoy high resale values, the FJ Cruiser is long dead, and pedestrian offerings like the RAV4 Adventure are not a valid alternative for true off-road minded individualists.

On paper, neither is the TJ Cruiser, a versatile 2017 concept vehicle that blends a unibody CUV with minivan trappings. It is, however, very distinctive, and it could be headed for a production line.

A concept vehicle which bowed at April’s New York International Auto Show could adopt a somewhat familiar name if it makes it to production.

Toyota has filed a trademark application for the TJ Cruiser name — a moniker which harkens back to the large, rugged and funky FJ Cruiser of yesteryear. However, if this name does find its way to a production vehicle, don’t expect similar proportions.