CAR GAZING
The most expensive Toyota ever
Land Cruiser gets redesign, big price hike for 2008
By Derek Price
HOOVER, Ala. – Outside this car, it's pandemonium.
Vehicles are backed up for miles; police officers are directing traffic at every intersection; and nearly all the other drivers are trying to get to the same place – the biggest mall in Alabama during the Christmas shopping rush.
Inside the car, though, it's pure serenity.
I'm driving the new Toyota Land Cruiser, a big, gas-slurping SUV designed for traveling across some of the roughest terrain in the world. Oddly enough, it feels perfectly suited for the urban jungle, too.
Toyota redesigned the Land Cruiser for 2008, making it bigger, more refined and more powerful than before, as you'd expect in the most expensive vehicle ever to wear the Toyota badge. This is a special SUV, one with intense attention to detail and so many luxury features that you wonder why it's not branded as a Lexus.
Toyota must think it's special, too. It raised the Land Cruiser's price by a whopping $6,000 for the new model, bringing the base price to $63,200. For that kind of money, you expect it to be one of the best in the world.
And it is. It's so quiet, for example, that you'd swear you were driving a big Mercedes-Benz sedan, not an off-road bruiser. If you crank the 5.7-liter V8 while the door is open, you hear a thunderous rumble like the voice of God. But as soon as you shut the door, there's nothing but silence.
It also drives amazingly well for a tank. It rides on an eggnog suspension, so smooth and creamy. The 381-horsepower engine is strong enough that you never realize you're driving a vehicle that weighs as much as the Pentagon.
On the downside, the Land Cruiser doesn't fit with Toyota's reputation for making fuel-efficient cars. It gets 13 miles per gallon in the city and 18 on the highway, which isn't too bad for an off-road vehicle with 381 horses, but it also reeks of hypocrisy at a time when Toyota is constantly plugging how "green" its lineup is. It's definitely no Prius.
When you step into the Land Cruiser, though, hydrocarbons are the last thing on your mind. You're too distracted by all the cool stuff you're drooling on, like a huge navigation system on the dash, a motorized DVD video screen that automatically folds up and down in the back seat, a refrigerated storage compartment for drinks, wonderfully soft leather seats, and so many buttons and knobs in the cabin that it looks like a '60s sci-fi movie.
I never figured out what all those buttons do. Some control the system that lets it automatically crawl, very slowly, up or down rocky terrain. Some are for the sensors that help you park it without bumping into anything.
Some are marked with three-letter acronyms that I don't understand. Perhaps they're for ejection seats or jet engines or trained monkeys that pop out of the headrests and start massaging your shoulders. I wouldn't be surprised.
In any case, the Land Cruiser is a remarkable vehicle with a rare combination of capability and comfort. Yes, it's expensive and uses a lot of gas, but it also lets you cross the jungle in utter luxury.
Even if it's just the urban jungle.
(Derek Price is a newspaper editor and freelance writer living in Texas.)
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