Toyota Land Cruiser V8 TD (2008) CAR review

Toyota's Land Cruiser. Since 1954 and with five million made, it’s gone on to be the world’s best-selling SUV. The Range Rover’s an upstart compared to this, and Toyota’s world domination started with exports of the Land Cruiser. As such, the company treats it reverentially.

That’s why it allowed a team of 1500 engineers the luxury of five years to develop the new version. That’s twice lean Toyota’s norm. And how to make the most satisfied customers in Toyota’s line-up (and of any luxo-SUV) even happier? Give them more of what they like. No off-road compromises for this most all-terrain of 4x4s. The problem came in lessening the on-road compromises…

It looks like a Land Cruiser always has.

Good - that's the idea. It may not be an icon here, but it is to Toyota and many others who love it. So the high-shouldered, edgy design sketches morphed into this massive, subdued machine with RAV4 sides and humungous front-end detailing. Dull to our eyes, not to the rest of the world.

The company says the £55,995 Land Cruiser’s interior is more premium, but look beyond the soft leather, backlit blue dials and quality dashtop plastics and things fall apart with hard lower-dash plastics, offensive plastic wood and a vinyl centre stowage box lid. You can feel the moulding line on the plastic wood steering wheel, while the LED glare of the clock is plain Datsun Sunny. Build quality is irreproachable, precision better than a Benz, but heavy-duty takes the place of rivals’ tactility.

It’s got a separate chassis. How quaint…

That’s for reliability and off-road ability anywhere on the planet. Land Cruiser drivers aren’t the most erudite off-raoders, but they still want to drive it anywhere. So it needs to be able, yet easy. And buoyed by a central Torsen diff, off-road-sensing anti-lock, up to 240mm of wheel travel and the height-adjusting suspension’s ability to eliminate anti-roll bar effects for even greater wheel articulation, it is. Even crawling over rocks that normal 4x4s would consider obstacles, it ploughed on in our hands, uneventfully. It’s praise indeed to say the Cruiser feels so competent off-road that it’s almost dull. The excitement comes when you watch from outside.

There’s even something called ‘Crawl Control’. Think off-road cruise control - it can be set at 0.5, 2 or 3mph, helping make best use of the electronic systems and leaving the driver free to simply steer. Pointless? Not for hardcore off-roading, when you need to hang out of the window to see where the wheels should go. Shame the monster torque and delayed response of the diesel means, for now, it’s a petrol-only feature.