atif7x7

As most of you know that our trucks are know as the Land Cruiser PRADO and many other parts of the world. Find below the link to an excellent article on the history of our trucks:

http://blog.toyota.co.uk/history-of-...ht-duty-models

YoshiMan

That's a good article! Its funny how they refer to these as "light duty" because they will pretty much destroy anything offroad.

atif7x7

Agreed...also had no idea that they still had those rugged looking trucks made in Aussie land

RickC5

At the beginning of that article, it was mentioned that Toyota built 4x4 vehicles for the US military before building them for the home market. If you ever look under an FJ40 at the drivetrain & suspension, you will easily see that the early Land Cruisers were based off WWII US 3/4-ton trucks, not light-duty Jeeps, given the size and robustness of the components.

However, the Prado (and our GX) design was based off the Toyota pickup drivetrain, which is why the GX has so much in common with the Toyota 4Runner (a.k.a. Prado in the UK and Australia), and less in common with the Land Cruiser and Lexus LX sold in the US.

Compared to the current Land Cruiser and Lexus LX, our GX is considered light-duty.

But, I agree that the GX is a perfectly adequate off-road truck--at least as good if not better than a 4Runner. What keeps it from being much better is the poor ground clearance, primarily caused by the truly stupid running boards. When I took our GX to Moab, we scraped the running boards several times on rocks that simply couldn't be avoided by trying different lines. My fantasy is to remove the running boards, add a 2" lift and some rock sliders & do some REAL 4-wheeling with the GX. Oh, wait, that's what we have the Tacoma for. Oh well.....

EricGX

Yoshiman, I believe even the luxurious Land Cruiser 200 is considered light duty. All across Africa and Australia you'll find the 70 series LC. They are made brand new and are built tough as nails and easy to work on. No electric windows, no cd player, only tape player in some. I think that's what Toyota would consider their "heavy duty" truck. Only recently have they started coming with a turbo-diesel V8 option in Africa. Australia has had it for some time. It was generally only available with a naturally aspirated diesel or petrol inline 6.

EricGX

RickC5, just want to confuse things a bit:

the GX and Prado are indeed the same platform (J120) but the 4runner isn't called Prado in the UK. I don't believe it is sold there. The Prado is actually called Land Cruiser and the Land Cruiser is called Land Cruiser V8.

But throughout most of the world the names are simply LC and LC Prado. Go figure...

The 4runner is based on the N platform (same as Hilux pick-up and Fortuner SUV) -also extremely popular and very capable 4x4 vehicles.

varithms

The two door would be fun.

RickC5

Living in the US, all I have to go on is photographs. From what I have seen, and perhaps I'm mistaken, the recent photos of the latest generation/version I have seen posted of the Prado in Australia sure look suspiciously like the 4Runner and Lexus GX460 sold in the US. If they are actually different, fine. BTW- I wouldn't purchase either the 4Runner or the GX460. Just not the same vehicles as our 470 IMHO.

YoshiMan

For sure, thats one area we got totally screwed on, is the 70 series was never sold here.

Having owned a 78 FJ40, and an 89' FJ62, it would be nice if they sold a no-nonsence full size suv in their lineup.

Like the Landcruiser 100 series, in Austrailia, you could of gotten it with cloth seats, a manual transmission, and a live front axle!