You ’ve noway driven off- road?! Not indeed once?! ” an incredulous Piers Ward blatted over the airwaves from his home in pastoral Lincolnshire. “ No, because there are roads where I want to go, ” came my cocky reply from a Sussex exurb.

Our associate editor was calling to deliver the news that my atomic Yaris Cross was going to be shifted for a gigantic Land Sportfisherman – two Toyotas putatively from different worlds.

Land Sedans being as rare as Ward’s favoured flat caps around then and the possibility of meeting a mamba appealing to me about as important as catching Covid, I had noway completely appreciated this 4×4’s fashionability or depth of lore.

Since 1951, Toyota has vended further than 10 million Sedans – enough for every person in London moment with plenitude to spare. numerous of those have ended up in Africa and Australia, but they ’re also popular in South America and the Middle East – principally, anywhere you need the off- road capability of a Land Rover without the associated trustability enterprises. The one complication is there is n’t just one Land Cruiser.

Utmost places, but veritably many of them in Europe, have the J300, released in 2021. Over then, we get what they know as the Land Cruiser Prado, which is lower and which has been in its J150 generation since 2009, its alternate facelift coming in 2017. And in really deep places, like Chile, Namibia and Canada, there are also Land Sedans 76, 78 and 79, variants of the J70 that has been in product since 1984. The same time the Mercedes- Benz W124 and Ferrari Testarossa were born

So why are we running a Land Cruiser now, in 2023? I wo n’t indeed pretend it’s to see if it can serve as a megacity auto or a good commuter, for egregious reasons. rather, we ’re doing so because it’s maybe the most anachronistic auto vended by a mainstream manufacturer moment and seems to be made more so by the day as everything additional becomes galvanized, connected and independent, which makes it a real doodad, an item of rare interest. I guess this is what you get when you write papers about the 1920s( see p66) and wear a baseball cap that reads ‘ fustiness has failed us ’

I began to question that as I stepped into my mammoth of a seven- seater for the first time, having noted the graduation- frame construction through the peering gap between 23in all- terrain tyre and big body as I jumped from the running board into an ivory leather president; was met by a gusto looking like a hi- fi you would find in Oxfam; touched yet more leather and Earth’s smoothest wood trim; and also read a spec distance waking me to the presence of a2.8- litre four- pot that would get just 29mpg. On diesel. At£1.70 per litre

I’ve tested numerous SUVs, but utmost of those were frontal- driven crossovers, and indeed the Land Rovers I ’ve driven have had a monocoque at least. The Land Cruiser is commodity additional entirely, I realised as it lumbered into loud life, sat back on its big bum and floated lazily out of Toyota’s line garage, my steering inputs are putatively taken as further approximations than directions.

Get this, though I was laughing like an idiot. So homogenous and characterless are numerous buses these days that I loved chancing a new way to drive and seeing controls and features that were completely strange. How’s a button for homemade diesel particulate sludge cleaning, an out- roading press or a central caddy that can serve as a fridge, for case? I would like the touchscreen’s Apple CarPlay to be wireless for my£ 64,150, but else Invincible spec( sitting above only Active trim) brings everything any country resider could need.

In terms of old- academy luxuries, I’ve said fridge, electric seat adaptation, a parking camera, parking detectors, automatic headlights,tri-zone air exertion, powered glasses, a heated and electrically malleable steering wheel and comfy chairpersons with ventilation and heating and upholstered in Ortaka Ivory leather( the same colour as the carpet).

As for out- road features, I’veMulti-Terrain Select( five off- road driving modes), cameras looking underneath the auto, bottleneck control( a kind of out- road voyage control), a body angle display, a steering angle display, off- road turning backing, a hinder Torsen differential, a locking centre differential and Toyota’s fascinating Kinetic Dynamic suspense System, which senses whether you’re on or off- road and also hydraulically optimises theanti-roll bars consequently.

And among the ultramodern technology, I’ve a9.0 in infotainment touchscreen with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and sat- nav, a punchy 14- speaker JBL stereo, adaptive voyage control, lane departure alert, business sign recognition, automatic high ray, automatic wipers, hindercross-traffic alert, automatic exigency retarding with rambler discovery and blindspot monitoring.

I may have been the butt of numerous jokes since being handed the keys to the Land Cruiser for the immediacy of my auto and my life, but I ’m formerly feeling like I ’m making a new friend, I ’ve reserved a course to learn how to out- road( that you can read about then in the coming weeks) and I ’ve indeed made one of my neighbours invidious. Surprise, surprise, she’s a travelling equine warhorse.

Alternate Opinion

The Land Cruiser might still be my fave each-round protean passenger 4×4, away from the Jeep Wrangler, which does commodity slightly different. That’s a hobbyhorse auto, this is a practical, each- conditions cart that can lug all day, or out- road all day, or sit on a motorway all day, and feels like it’ll do any of those effects principally ever. Easy to take for granted