Toyota has the enviable reputation of building cars that are almost indestructible. Top Gear has previously dropped one from a height, let it get caught in a high tide and then put it on the top of a building being demolished. It survived. Now Toyota’s made a super-tough LandCruiser.
The LandCruiser 200 turbo-diesel GX is a 4.5 litre twin-turbo powered diesel beast of a vehicle. It pushes out 195kW of power with a six-speed auto and full-time 4WD. To make it even tougher than previous LandCruisers, Toyota has gone and added vinyl floors, twin barn doors at the rear (vertically hinged), 17-inch steel wheels, a snorkel, 93-litre main and 45-litre auxiliary fuel tanks, five seats, under-body protection plates and a standard car key.
It includes driver and front-passenger airbags, curtain-shield airbags, vehicle stability control, active traction control, hill-start assist, multi-terrain anti-skid brakes and Toyota CRAWL – effectively an off-road cruise-control system.
There are creature comforts too… or so Toyota says. And impressive single CD player, manual air-conditioning, power windows and power mirrors. So pretty much everything you would expect in a car as standard about eight years ago. But go easy, if you’re going to be bashing your LandCruiser 200 Series GX around as much as Toyota think you are, the last thing you’ll be thinking as you start the ignition is whether or not you have a single CD to play. Oh, there is Bluetooth though…
Price: From $77,990 plus on-roads
Web: Toyota
Damian Francis has previously edited Australian T3 and F1 Racing magazine and wrote for GQ Australia and Men’s Health. Unlike Nick and Trev, he has no kids, no mortgage and no wife, but lives happily on Sydney’s North Shore with his girlfriend.
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