The 2024 Land Cruiser Is the Anti-Arrogant Off-Roader

There’s an assembly at Toyota’s plant in Tahara, Japan that’s making three vehicles for the North American market. There’s the new 2024 Lexus GX550 that's already on sale, then there’s the upcoming 2025 next-generation Toyota 4Runner that should be available in the late Fall, and then there’s this, the new 2024 Land Cruiser that’s going on sale about now. They’re all body-on-frame vehicles, they all use the same frame, and they're all similar in size with the same 112.2-inch wheelbase. What distinguishes them will be aesthetics, market perception, and some variations in powertrain and equipment. This is market segmentation sliced thin.

Toyota has metered out a few miles behind the wheel of the new Land Cruiser at an early-April press event near San Diego, California. Those miles were over a Toyota-optimized off-road course and didn’t include any time on-road. The assumption here is that if the new Land Cruiser can handle this course, it’s not going to have much problem traversing the drive-thru at Chik-Fil-A. But that’s an assumption.

If there’s a direct precedent for this Land Cruiser, it’s not the Land Cruisers as they’ve come to be known in North America.

The North American market Land Cruisers of the previous few generations were built to a spectacular standard of quality and priced to that lofty level. The 2020 Heritage Edition Land Cruiser went out the door for $89,110 before any dealer added options. This new one starts at $57,345 for the “1958” base model and tops out at the $76,695 “First Edition” before adding in things like $560 for the roof rack cross bars. It ain’t cheap, but it ain’t as expensive as Land Cruisers have been lately.

This Land Cruiser, a version of the Land Cruiser Prado that’s sold in much of the rest of the world, more closely replaces the (now retrospectively loved) FJ Cruiser that Toyota sold between the 2007 and 2014 model years. Like the FJ Cruiser, it shares its mechanical substance with the 4Runner. But instead of the 4Runner’s nearly-a-Tacoma styling, it’s packaged in an upright skin reminiscent of old FJs from the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies. The 1958 edition also has round headlights that recall those old FJs and the FJ Cruiser.

There’s argument to be made here that FJ Cruiser would’ve been a better name for this instead of sending the Land Cruiser name down-market. But, whatever. It’s not like Toyota doesn’t know what it’s doing when it comes to selling trucky SUVs. And Toyota is aiming to sell only 30,000 new Land Cruisers during its first year. For the Toyota behemoth, that’s a rounding error.

Like every other full-frame vehicle (Toyota or Lexus, pickup or SUV) Toyota sells in the United States, the new Land Cruiser is based on the TNGA-F component set. That means there’s a double A-arm suspension on coil springs in front and a solid rear axle located by four links and on coils. It also means most other engineering elements – steering, braking and other bits – are going to be at least closely related across the various Toyota and Lexus products.