2024 Toyota Land Cruiser World Premiere

Toyota Land Cruiser World Premiere -- at LandcruiserGAF.com

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Meh. Still no diesel engine.
They still sell diesels in other countries, but they don’t care about the American market.

It’s called a Prado everywhere else but here in the US. Just give us the real 70 Series Land Cruiser already.

In fairness to the new Land Cruiser, I'm not ONLY going to compare its capability to a Gladiator. I'm also going to compare it to a 33 year old series 80 Land Cruiser. To refresh your memories, the series 80 had front and rear locking diffs, 10.8" ground clearance, Coil springs, SFA, and a refrigerator. It could take 35" tires without a lift, and was generally considered the most capable vehicle that a regular Joe could buy at the time.

The new Land Cruiser is worse by nearly every performance metric outside of "Torque" and "Horsepower", which aren't very useful when you don't have enough ground clearance to drive across the trailhead to get where you want to go to take advantage of said Torque and Horsepower.

I’m disappointed in some of the choices Toyota made on this new version.

1) The Silverado-esque tall and narrow wheel wells. Not saying it needs to fit 40's off the assembly line, but it doesn't look like 35's are going to fit in those wheel wells. But you could do it on the 30 year old Series 80.

2) They only gave it 8.7" of running clearance. That's to the bottom of the frame. Thats LOW. It's 8.3" at its lowest point. And it doesn't look like it's just shock mounts and diffs that are that low. In the reveal video, It looks as though the front skid plate (or splash shield, not sure what the vehicle had in the reveal video) sits really low on the example model‘s front end. The front fascia is really low as well. The full-size spare is tilted so that its frontmost lower edge is in line with the bottom of the rear diff (4:13 of the reveal video). I think that the gap in between the rear diff and the front of that spare is going to lead to people getting hung up. Design flaw? Easy solution of course- just put the spare on top, but still not a great idea.

So, we have a Land Cruiser that has the front skids, rear tire, front fascia and rear diff all sitting at relatively low (8.3") clearance, which is not good for potential out-of-the-gate capability for those that want to get dirty. That is less overall clearance than a Subaru Forester Touring. It also means that the vehicle doesn't meet the suggested clearance to even get into many off-road parks. So, I understand (hence the name!) that the vehicle isn't a rock-crawling machine, but overall I'm a little disappointed.

Adding to this, Toyota claims the approach/breakover/departure angles are 31/25/22 degrees. I'll be the first to say I think that the claimed break over angle is dubious- my math shows it's 17.6 degrees. The only time I'll compare here to the Gladiator is that the Gladiator is 43/20/26. So if break over is accurate, the Land cruiser definitely won't high center where a Gladiator might, but it won't typically have to worry about a situation where it could high center with that abysmal departure angle. This really is not going to be a vehicle that people are going to take off road. I've scraped the crap out of the bottom rear edge of my Gladiator bed and if it has a BETTER departure angle than the new Land Cruiser, I don't have much else to say.

Anyways, I'll stop complaining now....

Below are the stats on the new Land Cruiser:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2024-toyota-land-cruiser-returns-to-its-origin-301891151.html#:~:text=Overall, Land Cruiser has an,high strength steel skid plates.

I honestly just do not get what they are trying to do here beyond making the Land Cruiser name more affordable so it will sell in the US.

Beyond that you have a truck roughly the same size as a 4runner with the same power plant as the 4runner will have after the refresh with the only real difference being that it has the off road goodies standard.

No front locker, no removable top and in my opinion uglier than a 4Runner. They literally built a vehicle whose main competition will be another one of their own vehicles.

If the hope was to revive their glorious off-road machine, and steal away Wrangler/Bronco buyers, then they failed miserably.

It looks nice enough but an auto with the hybrid turbo is a pass.

redriderjf87 said:

It looks nice enough but an auto with the hybrid turbo is a pass.

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Agreed, when I first saw it I thought it looked awesome, and something I'd be interested in. The auto only transmission doesn't bother me personally because my wife would never be interested in a manual in any of our vehicles, but when I saw it was a 4 cylinder turbo hybrid engine I immediately lost all interest.

I’m getting tired of everyone else releasing their 24’s. Can we just get the 24 gladiator out already ?

At 55K starting price, it's way cheaper than the last model and will likely steal Jeep sales.

redriderjf87 said:

It looks nice enough but an auto with the hybrid turbo is a pass.

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I got curious about this - apparently there have been three US-market cars in history that had a hybrid powertrain and a manual:

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/do-hybrid-cars-with-manual-transmissions-exist/

I found some other (ie Euro market) subcompact city car hybrids that existed with manual, also for short runs

But if this is going to be a gating factor, be ready for disappointment because I don't think we'll ever see another one. Especially not big, heavy, luxurious ones

GoFastJTR said:

Meh. Still no diesel engine.
They still sell diesels in other countries, but they don’t care about the American market.

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Be a C-c-combo breaker if there was a Manual Hybrid Diesel option, even a regular Combo Breaker with a diesel hybrid.

Hybrid alone though loses a few people, and only an I4 also turns people off, no matter how much boost they give it

Why couldn't they do a V6tt for a TRD Pro or something

To me this is a let down. It does not seem to be the successor of the LC200 or the LC300. It seems to be a cheapened version of the new GX550, in both material and engine options.

I'd pick the GX550 overtrail addition over these. LC200 prices are likely going to skyrocket.

fourfa said:

I got curious about this - apparently there have been three US-market cars in history that had a hybrid powertrain and a manual:

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/do-hybrid-cars-with-manual-transmissions-exist/

I found some other (ie Euro market) subcompact city car hybrids that existed with manual, also for short runs

But if this is going to be a gating factor, be ready for disappointment because I don't think we'll ever see another one. Especially not big, heavy, luxurious ones

Click to expand...

Yeah fair point, I'm already braced for disappointment in most new cars. Not that there won't be a hybrid + manual specifically (I don't want the hybrid nor turbo either).

I'm prepared to keep old cars/trucks if needed to get my naturally aspirated ICE and manual transmission.

I hope they don't drop the ball on the next 4runner now