Video: 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser: Deserving of the Badge?

Instead, Toyota brought this, the all new 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser. So yes, it is a Land Cruiser in full name but known abroad, the J250 is actually known as the Land Cruiser Prado, which means a little bit smaller, a little bit more affordable and well, honestly, it's a little bit lighter duty as well. So the question that I wanted answered for myself and obviously for y'all, is this a Land Cruiser worthy of its badge? (upbeat music) So that's the big question. Is the new Land Cruiser in its smaller size, lower price point, lower power, different engine, the whole comprehensive thing, is it still a Land Cruiser? Well, I can't really answer too much on the legendary reliability front, but I can tell you that this has some serious off-road chops. The one we are in, the one example of the Land Cruiser we're in does not have off-road tires. So we are on standard road tires as it were and it is doing quite an impressive job of handling this curated off-road course, but it is still very impressive. I am utilizing crawl control right now. It is the best thought of as an off-road cruise control. Pretty cool. I did the whole course last time without touching the gas or the brake a single time. And you can toggle the speed up or down from one to five using the dial, that's around that says mode select that you usually use to select sport or normal or eco mode, but it turns into a rotary knob for the crawl control. Pretty cool. So we can have, I'm gonna dial up a couple of ticks. So again, I have not touched the gas. Very impressive. On the screen, there's a front camera that even when, you know, a lot of times you're off-roading and you know, other stuff. You know, you get on an incline and you just see sky and it can be kind of... If you're not used to the trail, you're not familiar with it, it can be kind of nerve wracking. What are you gonna come down on, you know, what's in the other side? You know the Land Cruiser here has a front mounted camera that pretty much eliminates that. It's really nice. I can see everything ahead of me. And again, no off-road tires on this spec and it is doing phenomenally well. All the good stuff is being used right now. At the moment we are in four low. I have the sway bar disconnected and the center differential is locked. I'm gonna lock the rear diff up here a little bit and a couple obstacles ahead. But overall, it feels extremely capable. Now, is the solidity there? That is an interesting question because I have driven a fair amount of older Land Cruisers, including the immediate predecessor to this and I have driven the one before that and the one before that. And they all imparted that immutable sense of like it's carved from one chunk of granite and it was great and it was addictive and it was one of the best things about the Land Cruiser. I'll be completely honest, I'm not sure that this has that same crazy milled feel, but it's also significantly more affordable. This starts in the fifties whereas the old Land Cruiser, the last generation started in the eighties, high eighties. It's smaller. I think this is best thought of those that are familiar with the Land Cruiser lineage abroad. This definitely feels like a Prado. Not necessarily a bad thing. I also don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that Toyota might see the benefit in getting more sales with a more affordable, smaller Land Cruiser like this one. Eliminating the old Land Cruiser version and just using the current Lexus LX SUV as the conquest to capture those previous Land Cruiser customers 'cause they weren't selling a ton of those here before. Numbers weren't huge. So I bet you a number of them just went to the Lexus, which is a Land Cruiser underneath all that fancy stuff. When we hopped in this Land Cruiser to go back on the same route that we just took, you felt the refinement, you felt the composure, the comfort on that trail. It was necessarily easier 'cause it was a very easy dirt road, but it was kind of craggy and bumpy and this even, again, this was not the high spec off road version of the Land Cruisers, just the standard 1958 version base and it felt great. You kind of felt where the money went and that's important. So after a day spent on the trails, it really is the interior that I think the established American Land Cruiser buyer is gonna have to reckon with because while this is a size and price segment down on the previous vehicle, this goes to a lot more emphasis on the utilitarian side of the Land Cruiser which some people are gonna like and some people are not gonna like. That means with the price change and segment change, you're gonna have a lot more plastic in here, some good, some not so good. Tons of off-road toys and that's great. A lot of upright surfaces. You've got a cool box here in the center console depending on the, you know, which trim you get. But overall, you know, I gotta be honest, it kind of feels like a much nicer, much more expensive, much better, more cohesively designed next Gen FJ Cruiser. So given this is an off-road vehicle, we did get to drive this pretty extensively off-road on a number of courses and now, thankfully, we get to drive it on the road, which to be honest is where most of the new Land Cruisers are going to be driven. And since I've been driving the Land Cruiser, both on and off road, I've been really thinking about where this fits up in Toyota's very extensive off-road lineup. The what is kind of easy because this is positioned as the more refined composed alternative to the more truckish forerunner and it is a downsize on the Sequoia but there is some pricing overlap there. This does start around a little bit more with delivery than 55,000. We are in a mid grade model. With one option, you're pushing it into the sixties, at around the mid sixties. That is alarmingly close to a base Lexus GX which is also a very similar derivative. You get a bigger, more powerful engine, you get a lot of extra stuff. I'm not gonna get into that now. You can go see our previous coverage on that, but it does raise an interesting question because this is not the Land Cruiser that we've known. So now that we've reconciled what it is, how is it? I will say true to its purpose, really refined. Especially now that I have it out on pavement versus dirt road and all the trails. You can't really tell a ton about the vehicle out there other than how it performs off road. On road, no complaints. Very impressed. It does feel remarkably unibody in the sense that there's not much truckish about this. It feels, well, like a crossover. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The steering is light, smooth and easy. Inputs are generally an offensive fine. Like I said, it definitely doesn't feel truckish. I would definitely say it pairs more on the side of a Lexus SUV despite having some, you know, more utilitarian attitudes. The engine is shared with a large portion of Toyota's body on frame lineup, but it is reasonably well isolated. Power and acceleration is more than enough for what you need with this two row sort of compact SUV for what segment it's in. There is a bit of road noise, but that's not too bad, especially with the road tires and given this is a primarily an off-road vehicle. Wind noise because there are a lot of upright surfaces on the outside of this thing, wind noise is not too bad. You really start to notice it around, I would say 75, 80 miles an hour and well, probably beyond that. I did not get up that high yet. But that is honestly to be expected of something, you know, so visibly truckish, even though though it might not feel like it inside. But overall, I will say, this drives fabulously on the road for daily use, especially when you consider what it can do when the way turns rocky and craggy and muddy. We crushed some trails, we cruised some lands, stupid, I know. But at the end of all this, I've come to the conclusion that yes, I do believe that the 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser is deserving of its badge. However, I do think that American consumers, myself included, need to readjust their expectations for what this is and isn't. I don't think that we are kind of accustomed to the historical idea of the Land Cruiser Prado, but spread out between all of Toyota's wide range of off roaders, especially the Lexus GX and the Lexus LX, I think there is enough Land Cruiser magic that you can find your own. For my full thoughts and breakdowns, I'm gonna need you to go to cars.com/news.