- Toyota has been killing the SUV game for years.
They got the 4Runner, the Sequoia, the Prado, and at the top
of the proverbial totem pole, the Land Cruiser.
The LC's been a global favorite since 1957,
and let me tell you, I love these things.
My mom used to have one and she would drive me around in it.
Here's a picture of us in it, and it's a real picture.
So I have a certain amount of nostalgia
for these off-road legends,
and if anyone were to take that away from me,
I don't know. (phone rings)
Sorry about this, very unprofessional.
Oh, hello? - Hey, Jeremiah.
How you doing? - Mr. Toyoda, how are you?
(Mr. Toyoda mumbling) It's Mr. Toyoda
from Toyota Motor Company.
We're friends. (laughs)
Yeah, sir, I'm actually in the middle of filming an episode.
Can I call you back? - No, no.
(Mr. Toyoda mumbling) Okay, yeah,
well, what do you wanna tell me?
- [Mr. Toyoda] Well, I just wanted to call you
and let you know that, the Toyota Land Cruiser,
we're gonna discontinue it.
- You're discontinuing the Land Cruiser?
- Yeah. - Hold on, hold on.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You can't do that. - I gotta go.
I got business I gotta- - No, no, no, don't do that.
No, don't do that.
(Jeremiah screams)
After 60 years, Toyota is discontinuing the Land Cruiser,
and while that sucks, it did get me thinking
about why these trucks are so good.
From sand to snow, mud to sea water,
the LC has built up a reputation
of being able to handle the toughest of terrain
that Miss Mother Nature could throw at it.
So today on B2B, we're gonna pay homage
to the best SUV ever made.
We're gonna look at why it's so good
and get the inside scoop
on how Lexus might be front and center
of this legendary model's off-roading future.
(rubbing hands) Let's go.
(smooth music)
You can find a Land Cruiser
in just about any part of the world.
Whether it's the Sahara Desert or the middle of Siberia,
there's at least one LC in every country in the world.
I fact-checked that, that's a fact.
You don't need to look it up,
but after 60 years, Toyota has decided
to discontinue one of the most esteemed names
in off-roading, but why?
Why is Toyota discontinuing one of their longest running
and bestselling models?
Well, last night, I flew to Plano, Texas
and snuck into Toyota headquarters
to get you guys the inside scoop, and let me tell you,
it definitely involves a sneaky little plan
from their rich younger brother, Lexus.
(group gasps) (laughs) That guy is
just a hedge fund manager.
(phone beeps) (man mumbling)
(footsteps tapping)
(tool clinks) (man thuds)
(door creaks) (flashlight clicks)
(dramatic music)
But before you can understand Lexus's role in this,
you need to understand why the Land Cruiser was so admired
in the first place, and that boils down to one single word,
maximum reliability, and a major component you need
for reliability is your engine.
The 2UZ-FE in the J100
and J200 is a 4.7-liter V8,
and it is so good that Toyota put it
in many of their other vehicles like the Tundra,
the 4Runner, the Sequoia, and the Lexus GX 470.
I got one in my Lexus GX 470.
The 2UZ, from the get-go, was engineered to last,
and one of the most important things you can do
to make an engine last is keep the temperature down.
Toyota used lots of methods to keep the engine cool,
but one of the features they employed was
the use of oil jets.
Picture a piston in a cylinder.
As that piston goes up and down during combustion,
it heats up and, in turn, heats the block up
and the rest of the engine components.
So to cool down the pistons,
Toyota utilized something called oil jets
to maintain a proper temperature.
It's a funny design, but at the base of the cylinder is
a little jet that, yeah, you guessed it, it squirts out oil.
That jet shoots oil upwards
and hits the bottom side of the piston head,
cooling it down.
That oil then runs back down to the cylinder
and is cycled through to be shot out again.
So you've got suck, squeeze, bang, blow, squirt.
We're gonna have to change up the song.
Joe, can you get on that please?
♪ Suck, squeeze, bang, blow ♪
♪ Gas it up and off you go ♪
♪ Squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt ♪
♪ Everybody, squirt ♪
- The 2UZ finally came to an end, though,
and Toyota gave the J200 what we have now, the 3UR-FE.
This engine, it's a 5.7-liter V8,
and it brought the Land Cruiser the same Toyota reliability
with some added torque for a little bit more fun.
It features its own forged-steel crankshaft,
forged connecting rods, and aluminum alloy pistons
with a resin coating.
The forged internals in the 3UR really set
this engine apart, in terms of reliability,
and it's a brilliant successor.
If you really wanna learn why forged internals are so great,
check out this video here after you're done watching this,
and while you're at it, hit that Like and Subscribe button.
That really helps us out, lets the algorithm know
that we're doing a good job.
Now, like all beautiful art, it starts with a good canvas,
and all great cars start with a good frame, as well.
The Land Cruiser, it's no exception,
going back to the J80 series Land Cruiser,
which featured a steel ladder-type frame
that was great for off-roading
and was reinforced in the later J100 model,
reportedly being 50% stronger and more rigid,
using reinforced galvanized steel,
which stiffened up the chassis
and helped prevent things like rust.
Toyota, at one point, had a history with rusty frames.
I don't wanna throw them under the bus,
but I had a truck that (laughs) had a rusty frame.
Toyota switched it up with the J200, though,
and shortened the frame and made it 20% stronger
with thicker, reinforced steel.
Now the important thing that all these frames share,
however, is that they're all assembled
in a very similar way.
Take the latest Land Cruiser, the J200,
which flaunts a welded steel body shell,
combined with a full-size steel-ladder frame.
That's a mouthful, so let me explain.
The J200 is a body-on-frame construction,
which means the body sits on the frame of the car.
Now this is different from the more common unibody frame,
where the body and chassis are one cohesive piece.
All the driving stresses passes
through the entire vehicle on a unibody.
With a body-on-frame construction,
all the stress runs through the frame.
The unibody is more rigid
because the whole body absorbs the flexing,
but this becomes a problem when you take unibodies off-road.
The whole car gets put under stress,
including things like the windows, the doors,
and the hatches.
With the entire body flexing,
these doors and hatches become distorted,
which sucks, because then you can't open or close them,
so for extreme off-roading purposes,
this frame has a little flex,
which offers a good amount of articulation,
while putting zero stress on the body of the vehicle.
Of course, the frame is doing a lot of work down there,
so Toyota, they didn't spare any expense
and made the whole thing steel,
and if that wasn't good enough,
the body is fully steel, as well.
Now body-on-frame vehicles usually have higher center
of gravity, which offers good clearance on the rocks,
but it isn't so great for handling on the pavement.
So leave it to Toyota to design a suspension system
that gives drivers the best of both worlds
on and off the road.
Enter in KDSS.
"So what is KDSS," you ask?
Well, it stands for Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System.
Sounds pretty fancy, right?
Well, yeah, it is, and it's one of the reasons
that the J200 is such a powerhouse.
In order to understand how the KDSS works,
we need to understand what a sway bar's role
in a car is first and see why that's important.
See, when you turn or swerve a vehicle,
the weight is being shifted to one side of the car.
The heavier the vehicle, the faster you're going,
or the tighter the turn, that's gonna influence
how much weight is being shifted to one side,
so if you make a hard right,
a lot of the weight is getting thrown
to the left side of the car.
This causes the outside, or in the case, left side,
suspension to compress.
The sway bar's job is to control the body roll
and help minimize that.
Since the sway bar is linked to the wheels on both sides,
it helps compress the suspension
on the wheels inside the turn,
which prevents rolling during a turn.
Stiff sway bars are great for the pavement,
but when you're off-road, sway bars become
more of a hindrance than they are a help.
See, in off-road scenarios,
tires need as much movement as possible
to gain as much traction as possible,
but sway bars are traditionally fixed to your car
without any room for adjustability.
Now this is where the KDSS comes in.
The folks at Toyota decided
to replace one of those fixed points
with a cylinder that has a piston in the center of it.
These cylinders are connected to each other
via two little hose lines that run along the chassis.
Each hose line has its own independent oil reservoir,
so when one piston gets pushed up,
the other one gets pushed down.
The more compressed the cylinder is,
the more stiff that sway bar is going to be,
and likewise, the less compressed a cylinder is.
The less engaged the sway bar is,
you got more room for the tires to droop down
and find something to grip.
So how does KDSS function during turns on pavement?
Well, let's say you're making another right-hand turn
and all of your weight swings to the left.
The left-hand side suspension is going to compress,
and the right-hand side suspension is going to expand.
Since we have cylinders in both the front and rear,
both pistons will be sending each other
an equal amount of oil, canceling each other out.
So this stabilizes both cylinders
and allows our thick sway bars to do their job
and keep the car straight on the road.
Now for an off-road scenario,
let's imagine your back tire loses grip
because it's floating over a little divot in the dirt.
Naturally, your front tires are gonna wanna compress
in order to carry that extra weight,
and your front piston is gonna send that oil pressure
to your rear piston, which is gonna push down
and loosen that sway bar, allowing for more articulation,
get you moving forward.
Now getting that forward movement is
a full-time four-wheel drive,
powered by a front, center, and rear differential,
so when you make a turn,
each wheel has to travel at different speeds.
You can see this in the tracks your car makes
when you turn in mud or snow.
The differential, it allows different amounts of power
to be delivered to each wheel,
and generally, most four-wheel-drive cars have
a front and rear differential.
The central differential is the icing on the cake,
where it allows the front and rear axles
to turn at different speeds,
while the front and rear wheels also get
to turn at different speeds.
The center diff is pretty essential to this car,
since it is a full-time four-wheel drive,
and it allows it to deliver power
to front and rear axles smoothly on the pavement,
all without damaging its own gears.
This is just another great feature
that the Land Cruiser's versatility has
for extreme off-road capability
and being able to go get some sweet groceries.
They're the grocery-getter now, guys.
That's just what they are.
So now that we know why the Land Cruiser's so good,
I can let you in on a little, tiny secret I discovered
while I was in Plano, Texas.
See, Lexus is planning to steal the Land Cruiser.
(exclaims)
That's right, we all know that the Lexus LX 570 is,
basically, a slightly more hopped up version
of a Land Cruiser, and it's only a few thousand dollars more
than the Land Cruiser.
So Toyota thought, "Hey, if a buyer can spend $85,000,
"they can probably spend $90,000."
No one is hucking this thing through the desert anymore,
unless you just got money to burn.
They're dropping Susie off over at soccer practice.
"Bye, Susie, good job, hope you score a goal,
"but if you don't, it's okay, you have a trust fund."
So yes, it is sad to see the nameplate go,
but there's more to the story.
Now I don't know exactly how,
but someone at Lexus found out I was at Toyota headquarters.
I carry around my birth certificate.
Call me crazy, but yes, I know.
You're all wondering, "His first name is (beep)?"
Yeah, it is.
It's amazing, isn't it?
And they told me about a super secret concept project
that they thought could be a real successor
to the Land Cruiser name,
so they invited me out to Joshua Tree to check it out.
This is the Lexus J201,
Lexus's concept of a ready-to-buy off-roader,
built on the LX 570 platform.
The J201 is supercharged, it makes 550 horsepower,
and it's got some crazy upgrades,
like aftermarket control arms,
which help with off-road articulation and handling.
You can drive this thing pretty much under water.
It's like a submarine.
It's got a front bumper, which looks fricking sick,
and it's got a winch
to pull out your dumb friends when they get stuck.
Now the J201, it's just a concept right now,
but really, I think I know why they built it.
As a Lexus guy, we're a bit envious
of all the TRD editions that Toyota get,
and while us Lexus boys, we don't get anything.
So this is Lexus dipping their toes
into the high-end off-road game
to compete with, I don't know, cars like the Defender,
and what better way to do that than build a car
that could come from the factory looking like this,
but with a warranty.
I don't know, we're in the speculation zone.
Lexus hasn't told us any of this, but I put money on it
that they're gonna build a car like this
that you can buy from your dealership.
And then the great thing is, 20 years from now,
you and I can buy one of these things used.
Thank you guys so much for watching this episode of B2B.
Follow us here on Donut, @DonutMedia.
Follow me on Instagram, @JeremiahBurton.
Follow me on TikTok on SuckMyTruck.
I just bought a new truck.
Maybe I'm gonna do a build series on it.
Until next week, bye for now.
(smooth music)