2024 Toyota Land Cruiser Returns With Retro Looks, Locking Diffs, Hybrid Power

There was a lot of commotion when Toyota yanked the Land Cruiser out of the United States. But nobody believed it would be gone forever, right? It’s one of the most storied off-road nameplates in all of car-dom, right up there with the Jeep Wrangler, Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen, and Ford Bronco. It was always coming back. Indeed, this is the North American market's 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser that returns to our trails and its boxy roots in a package that I can’t stop staring at.

We were already gifted a preview of sorts with the new Lexus GX; to quote Huey Lewis & The News, “It’s hip to be square” at Toyota these days. It's a strong statement of purpose to roll out such straight-edged designs as other automakers focus heavily on aerodynamics. Then again, Toyota knows exactly who it's going after with this throwback look—which comes with a choice of two different headlight designs, round and square.

It's important to note that this isn’t a rebodied version of the full-size 300 Series Land Cruiser offered elsewhere in the world. Instead, it's what has historically been known as the Land Cruiser Prado, a smaller model produced since the mid-1990s that was never sold here but shared parts with the Toyota 4Runner and Lexus GX. But because this will be the one and only Land Cruiser sold in the US, it won't get the Prado suffix here. Just Land Cruiser. Got all that?

Bringing it all together, this new model will be built on the same flexible TNGA-F platform as the full-size 300 Series, the GX, the Tundra, and the Tacoma. It's 193.7 inches long, 84 inches wide including the mirrors, and 73.2 inches high, so it'll slot between the 4Runner and the Sequoia size-wise in Toyota's lineup. The Prado model has historically come in a short-wheelbase three-door configuration too, but no word on whether that's in the cards this round.

The five-seat retro 4x4 will also use a decidedly un-retro powertrain shared with the new Tacoma powertrain: a turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder coupled to a 48-horsepower hybrid motor with a 1.87-kWh NiMH battery pack. It produces a combined 326 horsepower and 465 pound-feet of torque as the sole engine offering across all trim levels.

An eight-speed automatic transmission puts all that power down with help from an electronically controlled two-speed transfer case. As this is a Land Cruiser made to do all the sorts of things Land Cruisers do, the new truck also gets full-time four-wheel drive and two locking differentials—center and rear—as standard. You never know when the going will get slick, rough, or downright Antarctic.

Three trim levels will be available at launch: the entry-level Land Cruiser 1958, the top spec that's simply called Land Cruiser, and a Land Cruiser First Edition which adds a cadre of off-road goodness. The most interesting difference between the base Land Cruiser 1958 and Land Cruiser is that the former comes with round headlights, whereas the latter sports rectangular lamps. When was the last time you saw a single model with two distinct faces?

The First Edition exclusively features round headlights too, in case you were curious.

A TRD Pro trim is not part of the launch, and when I pestered Toyota’s PR about whether one was coming down the pipeline, they declined to comment on future product. Let's call it a maybe. The Land Cruiser has never followed the TRD naming structure, though we see it on the rest of Toyota's 4x4 offerings.

There aren’t many differences between the models in terms of capabilities, as the Land Cruiser 1958's approach angle is just a degree lower af 30 degrees compared to 31, but breakover and departure remain the same at 25 and 20 degrees respectively. There’s also 8.7 inches of ground clearance across the models.