#toyota

A group of gearheads from Down Under have apparently set a new world record for driving a car underwater, taking a specially prepped old-school Land Cruiser about 7 kilometers (approximately 4.5 miles) across the floor of Darwin Harbour.

After emerging from the briny deep, one onlooker told the team to “drive this thing straight to the pub.” It doesn’t get more Oz than that.

Today's UCOTD is, uh, interesting. This 2002 Toyota Tacoma Prerunner TRD has more than 283K miles on the clock, it's 21 years old, and the price is $15,000.

The slow drip of information about the upcoming square-as-a-box Toyota Land Cruiser continues with the teaser photo you see above. 

Toyota is a sleeping giant. They’ve been building solid-but-boring cars, trucks, and crossovers for several decades, succeeding due to a legacy of anvil-like reliability. Of late, they’ve outsourced their sporty cars to other automakers or stuck the TRD badge on things like the Camry to which no sane mind would think to look for sportiness.

Disclaimer - I kinda dig the TRD Camry. 

But in the background, somewhere beyond the company that builds pickup trucks, SUVs, and even forklifts, you simply had to know there lingered a cadre of enthusiasts. A merry band of gearheads who would not rest until they had something they could build and enjoy by themselves. While it started with the rally-inspired GR Yaris overseas, we husky Yanks couldn’t be trusted to squeeze ourselves into such a wee hatch. Instead, we see this 2023 Toyota GR Corolla Morizo Edition. From what I can deduce using online translators and my butt dyno, Morizo roughly translates as batshit insane.

We’ve been hearing about the rise of electric vehicles for years, but while they are growing rapidly in number, there’s still a disconnect between an auto industry hell-bent on electrification and the desires of the people they rely on to buy new cars. Axios recently highlighted the issue and found that dealers have EV inventory sitting on their lots for extended periods, suggesting that supply is significantly outpacing demand.

It’s an open secret that the Big T is on the cusp of returning this storied nameplate to North American showrooms, meaning the release of a shadowy teaser image isn’t a huge surprise. Still, it’s neat to see what’s in the hopper for this off-road brute.

Today's UCOTD is a project vehicle, no doubt. That said, someone who snags this non-running 1988 Toyota 4Runner V6 could end up with a delightful off-road rig if he or she has the time and money to get it all fixed up.

It's another 1985 Toyota Celica Supra -- I guess I am drawn to these cars. Maybe because I grew up in the '80s and '90s myself.

Large, family-hauling SUVs prioritize comfort for obvious reasons. With the 2023 Toyota Sequoia, the brand also tried to be stylish. One mission accomplished, one not so much.

Chrysler revolutionized the American family-hauler world in the 1984 model year when the Plymouth Voyager and Dodge Caravan minivans first appeared. That same year, Toyota began selling Americanized versions of its LiteAce/ TownAce/ MasterAce Surf vans over here, attracting less attention but moving enough of them that I still see them during my junkyard travels. Here's an '87 that received the camper-conversion treatment, now residing in a Northern California car graveyard.

Sometimes, the new model year of a stalwart model brings the slightest of changes. For 2024, the top-selling sedan in today’s Lexus lineup gets a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em tweaks.

Toyota has released the second generation of the C-HR subcompact crossover and looks to have made numerous improvements to the vehicle. But it doesn’t sound like we’ll be seeing it on our market after the original model failed to resonate with North American consumers.

We also have the Toyota Corolla Cross available for purchase, resulting in some troublesome overlap. While still extremely slow in its base configuration, the Cross ended up being significantly quicker than the C-HR and offered improved utility for a little less money. However, with the new generation having addressed some of the discontinued model’s shortcomings, one wonders if the new C-HR would have a better chance were it to be shipped stateside.

Eager to continue showcasing its performance products sold under the Gazoo Racing banner, Toyota has introduced special editions of the GR Corolla, GR86, and GR Supra. Sadly, this makes them limited in nature and subject to dealer markups you might not want to deal with. However, if you’re looking for a collectible Toyota to keep in your garage for a few decades, these models are probably worth looking into.

Today's UCOTD is a cool little off-roader that comes to us by way of Utah: A 1971 Toyota FJ Land Cruiser.

I was channel-surfing the other night and came across the final Back to the Future movie. Now, like any child of the '80s, I like DeLoreans -- though I prefer the original to the time-machine converted since they look cleaner -- but I really, really love the Toyota pickup Marty dreams about. The same one he gets after he returns from the Old Wet.