Is the Toyota Land Cruiser V8 really the ultimate SUV? REVIEW

Mat’s got his hands on the V8-powered Toyota Land Cruiser! It’s one of the biggest SUVs on the road, and it dwarfs the Prado edition we receive in the UK! On the surface, it may seem almost identical to the 2009 edition, but given it’s got a 5.7-litre V8 under the bonnet that’ll produce 381hp and almost 550Nm of torque, does it really matter? Well, it certainly might when you consider it costs $85,000! Join Mat for a closer look at this super-sized SUV!

Hi everyone matt watson here from car web and here i have a toyota landcruiser and this is the full-size one not the smaller version we have in the uk which is actually known as the land cruiser prado you can think of that as being a little bit like a land rover discovery sport compared to this which will be the full big land rover discovery obviously i’m gonna give

It a jolly good reviewing and to do that and they took you around the design this 2019 or 2009 i can’t tell show you inside come to me come to me come on see how practical it is i do like a split tailgate and of course take it for a drive they oh now before we get into all of that please make sure you subscribe to our channel and hit the bell icon to turn your

Notifications on so you’re alerted when we make a new upload that way you won’t miss any of our awesome videos let’s start this review by talking about the land cruisers design now the thing i really like about it is that it doesn’t try to be anything it’s not and that is summed up by its exhaust it has a big exhaust but they don’t surround it with showy chrome

Or anything it’s just there to exhaust gases from the engine that’s it though toyota is still keen to promote the brand image because land cruiser is proudly and boss on the back but then to be fair this car has quite a bit history the first land cruiser went on sale in 1951 this one obviously is the v8 what is interesting is it has a roof spoiler i’m not sure if

That helps aero because if you look at this thing from the sides it’s pretty much a brick in fact if you were to ask a ten-year-old to draw a 4×4 off-road they would probably draw this now interestingly this side profile of this car hasn’t really changed since 2009 it’s effectively the same thing underneath apart from a few minor cosmetic tweaks at the front and

The back you’ve got some heavy duty running boards there to help you get into the car there’s a proper roof rack not just showing lifestyle bars that you get on most modern suvs so you can actually pull out a luggage on the roof of this thing it likes to just lock itself look so i got keyless entry so doesn’t matter it’ll only do if your keys outside the car anyway

Moving on you’ve got some shiny trim down the sides with landcruiser written on them the wheel size is 18 inches he actually can’t get anything bigger but it doesn’t mean you end up with a lot of tire which helps improve the comfort as you move around the front this thing isn’t too showy you know it just looks purposeful because it’s nice and wide yeah you do have

Led headlights and some promi slots in the grille but it doesn’t shout i’ve got money in the same way that a bmw x7 does but it is a similar price so it starts from $85,000 which is about 70,000 pounds however you can’t buy with these obviously in the uk so if you’re watching in america check out edmonds comm they’re a car comparison website just like car wire and

The link to them is in the description be like here on the inside the landcruiser looks really really old-fashioned qualities generally good though so squeegee materials here it’s soft here and on the dash leatherette down here and the control such as this robust and solid and the switchgear nice and damped as well steering wheels lovely and chunky they’re not the

Biggest fan of the wood on here or the wood on the dash once again old fashioned then there’s some bits that feel really cheerless sent to boss the steering wheel which has fake stitching also the plastics here flimsy the door handle it’s really big and chunky but it’s lightweight plastic in it feels like it belongs on a child’s toy and obviously you’re gonna hold

That quite a bit the front of the glove box scratchy plastics as well not in keeping with a car at this price and then these switches down here look they even flex now it’s just bizarre what i can’t fault though is the layout of the instruments very clear old fashioned digital dolls with a little screen in between them for various bits of information and then in

The center console you have your climate control and your main entertainment screen and that resume to this cars equipment list the standard fit equipment list on the landcruiser is really impressive so you get an entertainment system though to be fair it’s really old-fashioned the graphics are terrible there’s not much functionality there’s not much you can do

With it really and there’s no apple carplay nor droid auto it’s very very basic you also get a reversing camera and front parking sensors but if you look at this you’ll see you get cameras included with a wide view trailer view and a 360-degree view as well which is handli but once again the definition of that is terrible you can barely see what’s going on door

It’s so washed out you get four zone climate control as well and a jbl stereo which is bung in there’s an opening sunroof but it’s not very big you want to get electrically operated front seats and they’re heated and you can choose from three different temperatures and they’re called as well and you can choose from three different cooling temperatures plus you also

Get a heated steering wheel you also get toyota’s safety sins which includes plate departure warning what emergency braking with pedestrian detection blind spot monitoring and rear cross traffic alert to help prevent you reverse out into other cars finally you get voice commands but they’re a little bit laborious to operate it’s nowhere near as good as those in a

Bmw in fact if you click on the pop-up banner they watch my full in-depth video review or the bmw x7 let’s continue this review by talking about connectivity because there’s not all that much really here in the front you only get one usb port and an aux in there is a 12 volt socket there and bizarrely the wireless charging pad which is quite modern but most modern

Phones weren’t quite fit in there so you can’t shut them just that’s a little bit annoying i’ll show you another thing that’s annoying i do like the fact that when you turn the car on the wheel comes out to greet you the problem is for my ideal driving position and bear in mind i’m someone with quite short legs the steering wheel never quite extends far enough so

If you’ve got long legs you probably gonna find it just yeah it’s a little bit uncomfortable you can move it up and down as well though but once again the positioning just is a bit odd can’t fault the seat itself though it’s really comfy for the electrical as well and there is enough headroom if you’re really tall that’s okay terms of cubby spaces well you’ve got

Door bins which are only average for an suv there’s a couple of cup holders under here but a bit shallow so look things and flop around there is a little device which you could try grab your cup with but it’s not particularly secure doesn’t really work very well under this huge center armrest there is a bridge so you can call your drink which is lovely and then

In the glovebox there is plenty of space for a lots of junk i should probably show you this as well look you’ve got huge sun visor it extends that way as well and there’s another one here so it doesn’t matter when you’re driving around on a twisty road and the sun’s moving about all over the place you’ll still be able to shade your eyes anyway let’s move on to

The back seats welcome to the middle row of the toyota landcruiser as you can see there’s plenty of room back here so decent headroom decent knee room spray foot space as well you can slide the seats forward to keep people in the very back a bit more room check this out you can recline them as well look how far you can record these seats look at that is about as

Far as i’ve ever seen some seats recline in the middle row of any suv it’s very wide bench as well so you can easily fit three people in this middle row there’s plenty of room lots of shoulder space as well and because you’ve got a flat floor there’s lots of space for everyone’s feet as well if you look down here you’ll see you’ve got your climate control buttons

There and you’ve got heating and cooling for these back seats while these ones don’t get it in the middle seat unfortunately also you have your controls here for this in retaining system in the back yes now that’s an optional extra and i wonder why they’ve got these covers on the screens maybe it’s to hide the fact that bezels rather large or to keep it away from

Prying eyes of thieves like they’ll never know that that’s a screen worth nicking i don’t know in terms of the practicality look for this down use the armrest although look at that weird how it flops down and then the cupholders then just pop out you’ve got a useless tray there and under here it’s important the storage although it does have the control for the rear

Infotainment system yeah that’s great now if you want to carry longer items you can fold down the centre seat if you want to for some reloading which is handy if you need to carry a baby seat well the ice because anchor points are under here but that looks a bit cheap and it’s a little bit hard to actually locate the anchor points through the hidden within the seat

Cushion kids will be very happy back here because the windowsill in the back is very low and the rear windows which a huge give you a good view out they also go all the way down what’s not so nice is the fact that you don’t have much connectivity back here so there’s one 12 volt socket for charging mobile devices and hdmi input the rim for tainment system but

There’s no usb port so if you’ve got three kids back here trying to charge their devices mm-hmm that ain’t gonna work out particularly well you got some extra storage here in terms of netting and the door bins they’re a decent size as well now let’s see what the size is like in the very back of the landcruiser so to fold the seat out the way you do that and then

Ease it forward then i can climb into the back right i’m gonna pull this into position fold this up and now i need to move this one so you can see what the heck’s going on right now i dressed up as well knee room is actually okay head room if i’m sitting up straight is type if a slouch i can get away with it and remember i can slide these seats forward a little

Bit and the people in the middle row will still have just about enough knee room the main problem is the factory is sitting really low on the floor if you look at the angle here it’s super uncomfortable and check this out do you know why that’s there that’s because here in the very back it’s supposed to be a three seater i don’t know who wants to sit in this middle

Part here though some very unfortunate child that does though mean that this car is an 8 seater overall but i won’t want to spend too long in the back of it i mean yeah you’ve got a couple of cup holders here more over here and some storage here but yet again there’s no connectivity so if the children’s mobile devices run out of battery they’re not gonna have to

Charge them and they’ll start kicking off anyway let’s move on to the boot i will put this back now as you’d imagine with all three rows in place cargo space is limited but actually it’s better than average for a seven seater suv it’s handy that you have a splitter tailgate just makes loading easy you can just slide things in and you could just about squeeze some

Soft bags in there now to fold down these seats it’s bit of a process you have to fold that down and he fold the back down and he fold this up and look how diesels that they fold up sideways just do the other one so there we go that then that then that and there we go you do have a big boot area but these seats do just eat into the space it makes it a little bit

Hard to pack it and get the most out of the space now to fold down the middle row you have to go round to the rear doors and fold them forward now go go all the way around to the other side bear with me to do the other one there we go and that’s your total cargo area but as you can see the way the seats don’t fall flat into the floor like in a land rover discovery

Does impede just how much you can pack in here in fact if you click on the pop-up banner there you can see my full in depth video review of the land rover discovery and that brings me on to five annoying things about the toyota landcruiser the sunglasses holder has some really rubbish material in there which isn’t cushioning enough or soft enough for my glasses

So i’m gonna have to put them in there in the case which seems a little bit pointless this is one heavy ass car it weighs over two point six tonnes which means it’s even heavier than my daily driver a mg g 63 and if you click on the pop out banner up there you can watch my video on that car as a result economy on this thing isn’t great so in the city you’re looking

At 30 miles per gallon that’s us miles per gallon by the way though i actually just managed 12 miles per gallon on the way here oops well you can operate most of the climate control functions using these buttons if you want to alter the fan speed exactly as you want it you have to press this button there link on the screen and do it this way when they just include

It down here with all the other buttons because the rear portion of the split tailgate isn’t power operated you can’t shut the lot the press of one button like you can with the range rover so you have to put this at first and then close the top off and boy does it take ages to shut it’s still going come on that’s it the active cruise control system may use a radar

To keep your safe distance from the car in front but it disengages below 20 miles an hour so you can’t use it to shut your long in stop-start traffic it’s not all negative though here’s a cold wave five cool features yeah full-size spare way on none of that tire sealant nonsense or a space saver this means you can keep on going off-road even if you get a puncture

There’s a proper old-school style ratchet handbrake which means there’s less to go wrong when you head out into the wilderness first you can use it to break the rear wheels if you want to do skids or maybe help when off-roading guy don’t really know really could be useful the cost of italian system has inbuilt maintenance reminders for pretty much everything you

May need to maintain on the car and there’s a couple of extra ones there for personal maintenance reminders say if you need to go have a full body health check i guess this thing is a proper old-school off-road air so you’ve got a ladder frame chassis which is super tough for off-roading you’ve even got a rigid rear axle then there’s the permit four-wheel drive

System which you can switch between high gear or low gear for extra pulling power when you get up steep slopes there’s even a crawl mode which is like a cruise control for off-roading really slow speeds you can lock the differential as well and you can even press a button which will make it pull away in second gear print proved traction and less slip landcruisers

Or have a reputation for being super durable and reliable and like some suvs that come out the same country that i’m from they mean no names as a result they hold their value really really well engine choices on the land cruiser are super simple throughs just one and that’s it it’s a 5.7 liter v8 with 381 horsepower and 543 newton metres of torque it drives all

Four wheels for an 8-speed automatic gearbox ok let’s see what the landcruiser is like to drive so let’s start off with a good i love the visibility it’s really good you’ve got huge door mirrors that’s nice the seats are so very comfortable i’d go mall after mile in these things they are lovely the gearbox is pretty smooth and relaxing it blurs the gears together

Very well i also find it quite comfy the suspension does a good job of dealing with bums its snooze them out there you can tell this is built on a proper off-roading platform with a lot of frame chassis because you get that shimmy and a shake over broken surfaces that you don’t get in things like a range rover which have a monocoque a far more modern construction

And that brings you up to things that aren’t so good the steering for instance is really heavy vague and a bit like steering a ship this thing and as you go around a bend it leans and lists and loll ups about then there’s the brakes which do nothing when you first press them then all of a sudden they oh it’s oh i drop in an anchor it’s generally quieter when you’re

Cruising on the motorway but it’s just not as quite as something like an audi q7 and if you click on the papaya banner up there you can watch my full in-depth video review of that car i have to say to sum this car up it does feel a little bit old-fashioned and in need of an update you definitely don’t wanna begin to quick into the corners because you could end

Up in a lot of trouble it’s not terrible though you can get around you just can’t hurry it when the roads like this just accept what it is and that you’re basically driving a car from 2009 not 2019 so then what’s my final verdict on the toyota landcruiser should you avoid it consider it shortlist it or just go right ahead and buy it well i reckon you sure to

Consider the land cruiser it’s brilliant off-road it’s super reliable and very practical the only problem is is that really do you need its off-road capability most people won’t and for those there’s far better more modern alternatives out there a little bit cheap by the centre boss which has it’s a custom

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Is the Toyota Land Cruiser V8 really the ultimate SUV? REVIEW By carwow