Here's Why the 2018 Toyota Land Cruiser Costs $85,000

this is a 2018 Toyota Landcruiser and it costs $85,000 yes that's right Toyota the same company that makes a $25,000 rav4 SUV also makes an $85,000 luxury SUV that costs more than almost every SUV from mercedes-benz and Land Rover and BMW today I'm going to explain why I've borrowed this Land Cruiser from a viewer here in the San Diego area and yes this car starts at around $85,000 Toyotas online configurator officially says eighty six thousand and sixty dollars with shipping so how do you justify spending eighty five thousand dollars on a Toyota SUV what makes this thing worth so much money you could buy two and a half Highlanders for the price of this it's all about durability the Highlander is a great family car for the suburbs that take your kids to soccer practice but the Land Cruiser can literally go anywhere and it can literally do anything and it can give you a luxury experience while you're getting there a little history the Land Cruiser first came out decades ago and the original one looked like a Jeep eventually it was refined in the 1980s that it was refined again in the 1990s and then it was refined again in the 2000s and then eventually they got to this and this is truly one of the most capable and durable vehicles on the road it's often said that most automakers engineer their parts to last 10 maybe 15 years whereas everything on the Land Cruiser is over built and designed to last for 25 years that means you should be able to be driving this thing around in 2043 without it really wearing out all that much and it also means you should be able to get into a 1993 Land Cruiser and have most things still working which frankly is true if you've ever tried to buy a used 1990s Land Cruiser and you've seen how expensive and how sought-after they still are and it's more than just that the Land Cruiser is tremendously reliable yes but it's also immensely capable it can go basic everywhere because it has every off-roading extra and accessory you could want directly from the factory and it's incredibly luxurious with basically every luxury feature and amenity you could possibly want basically it has everything and it's ready to go anywhere if you were to ask me to pick one car to take a trip around the world or to drive to the Arctic Circle or to ride out a hurricane I wouldn't even hesitate give me a land cruiser and let's get going and with that in mind today I'm going to take you on a tour of the most capable durable new car on earth I'm gonna show you all of the interesting quirks and features of the 2018 Land Cruiser and then I'm gonna get it out on the road and drive it and then I'm going to give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the landcruiser click the link below to visit autotrader.com slash oversteer where I've also rounded up a list of the most expensive cars built by normal mainstream automakers now I want to start leek works and features with the discussion of probably the Land Cruisers biggest quirk and that is its simplicity and some of the more simple durable features you'll find on this car that are a little unusual for it's $85,000 price point and I want to start under the hood what you see here is a 5.7 liter v8 380 horsepower 400 pound-feet of torque there is no turbo charging and this engine like there isn't so many other cars there's no diesel there's no hybrid there's no plug-in hybrid you just get a big old naturally aspirated v8 because it lasts a long time so that's what you put in a car that is designed to last a long time styling is another example of the lane cruisers focus on simplicity this cars mechanical twin the Lexus lx570 takes a shall we say different styling approach to put it charitably the Land Cruiser on the other hand is just more subtle more restrained if you were driving next to this car behind this car on the road and you didn't know you would just assume you're next to another Toyota and in talking to people who own these that's one of the things that they like best it's a really nice car but it just blends in and that simplicity has carried over to several items in the interior the most obvious of which is the parking brake almost every car at this price point has an electronic parking brake but this thing still has the old-school parking brake lever like in an old car from the 1990s it is unbelievably surprising to see that in an $85,000 vehicle but one thing you can promise about this parking brake versus an electronic one it isn't gonna break and there are other examples of it all throughout the car for instance you can see the clock in the center still uses that old 1980s clock font instead of a nice new LCD screen Toyota has put in a couple of LCD screens because you have to in modern times and modern vehicles especially at this price point but the stuff you actually need the clock and the climate control temperature is this old simple clock font that Toyota has developed so that it won't break same with the odometer there is a full-color screen in the gauge cluster but the odometer itself is just this old-school screen that seems to last forever in Toyotas going back decades and same day with the gear lever the gear lever and most cars at this price point has become like a little electronic push-button thing that you move in tap in certain ways and it goes into gear this thing it's this big ol lever you pull it into gear it might not look good but it's functional it's simple and again it works so that's what the landcruiser has now with all this said I don't want to make it steam like this car has no amenities for $85,000 you are paying a lot of money and so you are getting a lot of stuff now for instance this car has a 360 degree camera top-down view just like you would expect from a car at this price point it also has all the other modern safety features that you would want and frankly sort of expect from a car at this price point for instance it has radar cruise control so it will slow down and speed up depending on the speed of the car in front of you automatic braking if you're about to get in an accident has a blind spot monitor has lane departure warning all that stuff that most cars are adding nowadays the Land Cruiser has well another cool feature of this car has you've heard of automatic climate control where you just set a desired temperature and then the system does the rest to get the interior at the exact temperature you want well this car has automatic climate control seats you turn on the seats heated or cooled and it does whatever is necessary to get the seat temperature to your exact liking that is a pretty nice luxury touch also in terms of features one of the most important things to talk about with this car is the off-roading features because it has a ton of them it has locking differentials that has low range gearing and it has my favorite item crawl control now I did a video a long time ago where I off roaded one of these the latest Land Cruiser and I'm going to link that video below so you can see this stuff in action but basically a simple explanation of crawl control is it's like cruise control when you're off-roading it senses the terrain you're on and you can choose exactly what speed you want to go and it will basically crawl at that speed knowing that it's on rocks and so it has to be a little more careful the really cool thing about crawl control though is it can basically get the car unstuck I've seen videos online where they've buried these things in sand up to the hubs and roll control has these sensors that send exactly the right amount of power to the wheels in order to sort of lift the car up from being stuck and drive away it's a lot better than you kind of flooring it with the gas pedal and just kind of hoping the car digs itself out next I'm moving on to a couple of other interesting quirks in the interior one interesting item in this interior that I absolutely hate is adjusting the air flow and the climate controls this car is all about simplicity and so it's easy to change the temperature is just an old-school button it's also easy to change where the air is coming out etc the one thing you can't change with a button though is how much air is coming out to do that you have to press climate then go into the screen and then you can adjust the air flow this is a big mistake frankly I think Toyota should have just put a little button down here somewhere that allows you to manually adjust the air flow without having to go into the screen other interesting items in the interior of the landcruiser back to the old school parking brake how about the fact that the parking brake has a little leather boot on the bottom of it and that little leather boot has a zipper on it which seems a little bit odd hey Kenya can you unzip my parking brake please I mean I have seen some parking brake zippers and old school cars but not in a modern one that costs $85,000 another interesting item at the landcruiser is its key and now for years the Land Cruiser used the same key as basically every other Toyota which frankly is a little unbecoming of the expensive luxury car the Land Cruiser has turned into now it finally has a nicer key and if you flip it over it says Land Cruiser on the back with little tire treads to emphasize the fact that you can take this off road and that key is the start of your journey another cool feature of the Land Cruiser is that the center console is cooled the climate vents actually come into here and they can keep cool whatever you have you go pick up a sandwich and you want to keep it cool or water bottles whatever and a very cool feature of this is the fact that it is completely silent even it max cool check this out right now it's silent inside the car but you open it up and it's max cooling whatever you they're closed again and again it's silent you don't hear it on at all but when you open it you can hear that it is doing its job and keeping cool whatever you need to be kept cool next up moving on to the second row the rear seats in the landcruiser nothing particularly unusual or surprising back here although I will say that I love the leather seating material in this card is tremendously soft more so than in most other luxury cars and it feels just like a nice place to sit a couple of items worth noting in the rear of the landcruiser one is the surprisingly impractical center armrest you can fold it down and obviously it works as an armrest but not much more than that you open it up for storage and there basically is no storage it gives you like a quarter of an inch of the depth so then you see this plastic bit on the top and you're like well great there's a wireless charging pad for rear passengers that's pretty cool well no it's it's just a plastic bit on the top have no idea what it's doing there fortunately the center armrest does have a little cup holders you push them and then they pop out next up we move around to the rear of the Land Cruiser were there a couple of interesting items back here starting with the tailgate now you can open up the tailgate automatically by pressing a little button on the key and when you do you will notice that only the upper half of the tailgate opens that's because the landcruiser still features a split tailgate the lower half has its own little latch and then it opens independently the theory here is that if you're out having a picnic or foxhunting or whatever people with lane cruisers do you can sit back here on the clamshell and a lower part of the tailgate and enjoy your picnic lunch which is a really cool idea and I have to say my old Range Rover have this exact same feature and I use it all the time it is brilliant most automakers don't do it because obviously it's costly to divide the tailgate into two pieces but in a car like this it's tremendously practical now if you look over in the passenger side on the cargo area you will find an incredibly complex explanation of how to lower the third row of seats it just goes on and on it's one of the most complex labels that I've ever seen placed in any vehicle which is kind of funny because actually lowering the seats is incredibly easy you pull this thing they go down you pull this thing they go up that's it it takes four seconds but Toyota felt that they had the need to put that very complex label on the back now once the seat is in place you can see it's just folded up against the window which is a really stupid place for it in most modern cars you can just fold the seats right into the floor and then they go away and it doesn't take away any of your visibility so why did poyo to do this it's a good question the reason is if you look under the car you will see down here there is a rear differential there is a full-size spare tire stuff you'll need when you actually go off-roading and Toyota couldn't relocate that stuff and so the seats can't go into the floor because they need the stuff that's under there so instead they did the next best thing which is put the seats up here it's not ideal but it works in a car where off-roading is one of its primary benefits now there are a couple of other interesting items in the back of the Land Cruiser one of which is accessing the toolkit with like the tire changing tools this is a hilarious example of how stupidly overbuilt the Land Cruiser is the toolkit is in here and in order to access it you have to first unlock two plastic clips not one but two even though one would have been fine then you move out this carpeted piece and then there are two plastic snaps that you must undo so you undo those and you can pull out the toolkit and once you've pulled out the toolkit there are two more plastic clips that you have to open in order to actually access the tire changing tools it is a six step process of unlatching stuff just to get to the tire changing tools most cars just throw it under the load floor and call it a day this thing has it snapped into place in six different places because just everything is overdone more than it needs to be what other interesting item you'll find back here is the Toyota first aid kit it's actually unusual to see a first aid kit in a Japanese car it's pretty common in German cars because most European governments require vehicles to keep a first aid kit with them but the landcruiser has one because you might be off-roading and get bitten by a snake and then maybe you'll need these scissor next up we move back inside or move on to the infotainment system which has a couple of interesting quirks one is the fact that I love that the infotainment system adjusts the clock so as you tap this very nice modern screen you can see this old 1980s looking clock font changing below you in real time it's just kind of funny that the really nice screen is doing the adjusting of the really crappy old one I guess Toyota got tired of the little H and M buttons they used to have or you can adjust the clock and instead they decided to go with something a little bit more modern another thing I like about this car is that you can train the voice recognition system to understand your voice it gives you a series of different sentences to say and then you say them and then it kind of understands your diction the way that you speak and that makes it easier to recognize your voice unfortunately I find it to be a little more exciting to do something a little bit different with the voice recognition system please say the phrase reserve a table at 8 p.m. for 4 people at horseback Steakhouse kill five dinosaurs before 9 p.m. at horseback Steakhouse pardon another thing I love in navigation settings this car gives you the option of choosing areas to avoid which I find to be hilarious your expensive luxury SUV you can choose areas that you don't want to drive in oh it's because of the traffic I don't want to go over there not for any other reason another strange option the navigation system gives you is the 3d map view angle if you have the map set to the 3d view you can change the angle and you can change it like ever so slightly with like 10 different possible angles just in case you find it to be just a little too high oh no no it's a little too low ah yes that's the precise 3d map angle I want it seems odd that that's configurable mixed we move on to the maintenance reminder now in your car you might have a thing that comes on and tells you that it's time to get an oil change a lot of newer cars have that in this car you can set a maintenance reminder for everything look at this screen of stuff you can choose you can select an oil change obviously but you can also select an air filter a tire rotation brake fluid transmission fluid basically anything that might need to be replaced in this car you can select a reminder for when it needs to happen now you have to go in and set all this stuff manually like when you change the wipers you go and tell the car you did it and when you want to be reminded to do it again but the benefit is you don't have to save all the paperwork from all your service visits and kind of figure out oh it's been 5,000 miles instead it's all right here and I mean it's all right here that is a really impressive feature and that feature doesn't only work for just service and maintenance there are also three little icons for personal where you can add in a personal date that you want to be reminded for example an anniversary or a birthday you can plug it in to your Toyota infotainment system and then it will remind you that that date has arrived one other interesting infotainment system quirk I noticed when you go to adjust the brightness it shows a map of the greatest city in the world Washington DC and you can adjust the brightness and you can see how it changes on the screen fair enough but when you go to adjust the camera brightness instead of showing the camera in action it shows this weird display of red yellow blue all the colors and then grayscale and then when you adjust you can see it on there I'm not sure why it doesn't just pop up the camera so you can see how the changes you're making actually affect what you see but well for some reason it doesn't and so those are the quirks and features of the 2018 Land Cruiser now it's time to get it out on the road and drive it all right driving the 2018 Land Cruiser I love this vehicle more than almost every vehicle that I review in part because I feel like I am the Land Cruiser you know you guys always make fun of me for wearing two t-shirts and I wearing because I sweat and when I tell people that they're like well you should wear this microfiber special and I'm like look I wear two t-shirts it works and that's the landcruiser I mean stuff in this car yeah you could have an electronic parking brake and it's more modern it frees up more space in here but like this works how do you fight that it works well I'm gonna keep doing it now the one thing that doesn't work the one thing that I wish they would do better on is fuel economy yeah this thing's got this giant old za from a Tundra to run forever it can pull anything but I mean this thing's getting like 12 13 miles per gallon and that was okay when this truck came out in a wait with this engine but it's been 10 years everybody has figured out a way to do better and you know even if you can afford the fuel and I think most people who have one of these probably can it's just kind of a mental thing now like you don't have to get 12 miles per gallon to drive a big pickup or to drive a big SUV and it's just you just don't feel like you could be doing better for the world than this way that said I'm for it here same moves it halts it really holds I mean it's not fast like a sports car but like for a massive SUV the size of this thing that is a lot of power and it feels like it has power for every situation so I complain about the fuel economy in one sense but in another sense I'm like I kind of like that v8 in terms of driving this car is tremendously smooth really really really luxury car smooth um you know I drove the new Lincoln Navigator I've done the new Range Rover both feel fantastic I wouldn't necessarily say that this feels better but it certainly isn't worse there's a little bit more wind rush it's not quite as perfectly well built in terms of like high quality materials since they're going more for durability there's more plastic in here it's not quite as nice but it is longevity is sort of the idea with this car but this truck has two massive benefits over the Range Rover namely its reliable which the Range Rover absolutely isn't and maybe more importantly it's just really good at holding its value these things have a tremendous following in the off-roader world so as they become less valuable as a luxury SUV then the off-roaders want to pick them up and they do pick them up and you'll never have trouble selling one of these even if it's 15-20 years old because it'll still be worth $20,000 to someone who's gonna lift it up and take it into the canyons and off-road with it next decade or so it turns us steering and handling it's not so bad it actually body rolls a lot less than you would think given its size that its heft it does actually do a pretty good job with controlling body roll better than I would have expected one annoyance for me is that the adaptive cruise control system in this truck can't bring it to a full stop I would actually love to get one of these but adaptive cruise control I like to use in heavy traffic to kind of do stop and go for me so I don't have to do my footwork and in this truck it turns off below 20 miles an hour which is kind of annoying it's a great SUV and I love the idea of it and I love that it exists and I think it is truly one of the best SUVs that you can buy and I sincerely hope that Toyota decides to continue selling a Land Cruiser in the United States I know that there is some concern that maybe they won't redesign it and just stick us with a Lexus version but to me the Toyota is just this name that brand Toyota Landcruiser is one of the strongest ever and I hope it lasts forever just like I know this truck will and so that's the 2018 Toyota Landcruiser it is ridiculous to spend $85,000 on a Toyota in a segment that also includes the new Range Rover and the new Lincoln Navigator and the Lexus lx570 which is Lexus's own Hui toidy luxury v version of this exact car but some people don't want a luxury brand name some people want to focus on dependability reliability longevity and capability and if you're looking for that kind of brand name then there is none better than Land Cruiser and now it's time to give this car a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the Land Cruiser is bland but that's kind of the point it's understated it's subtle and it gets a 5 out of 10 acceleration to 0 to 60 and 6.7 seconds which is quick but it lags behind the class leaders and it gets a 2 out of 10 handling is ok it's not sporty but it's secure enough with relatively minimal body roll and it gets a 3 out of 10 fun factor is better than rivals the Land Cruiser isn't more to drive but it's far more capable off-road which adds a dimension of excitement and it gets a 5 out of 10 finally a cool factor if it were me personally deciding this I'd give it a high score as my friends and I get really excited when we see these but most normal people have exactly the opposite reaction it is after all just a Toyota SUV it gets a 5 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 20 out of 50 next up are the daily categories started with features the Land Cruiser has a lot of luxury stuff but it's also missing a few things the best SUVs in this segment have like Lane keep assist and any sort of self-driving features not to mention any technology to improve its fuel economy it gets a 7 out of 10 comfort is very good and it gets a 7 out of 10 quality is high the Land Cruiser will truly last forever and its dependability is legendary but it isn't exactly beautiful inside it still gets an 8 out of 10 practicality is high it's a capable three row SUV with lots of cargo space it's hampered only by fuel economy and it gets a 9 out of 10 finally value these things hold their value well which is a good thing but it's also an $85,000 Toyota with a dinosaur engine so it's right in the middle with a 6 out of 10 add up the daily categories and it gets a 37 out of 50 add it all up in the dug score is 57 out of 100 which places it right here among big SUVs and I also threw in some luxury pickup trucks to the Land Cruiser can't match the overall package of the Range Rover or the Lincoln Navigator but it's more durable and it has better resale value two important items to a small slice of the car buying population

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,910,584

Rating: 4.7407255 out of 5

Keywords: toyota land cruiser, 2018 land cruiser, new land cruiser, toyota land cruiser review, land cruiser, land cruiser review, 2018 land cruiser review, 2019 land cruiser review, 2019 land cruiser, 200 series land cruiser, toyota land cruiser 200 series, toyota land cruiser 200 review, 200 series review, doug demuro, demuro

Id: FWRORb9bpxY

Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 06 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Sti_mulus]

The epitome of automotive reliability.

[u/EatSleepJeep]

Without watching: It will go anywhere reliably

After watching: It will go anywhere reliably

/r/buyitforlife

[u/milkyxj]

Doug, the body roll is so well controlled because it has a hydraulic sway bar that can disconnect when off-roading called KDSS (kinetic dynamic suspension system). This system along with crawl control is now available in the 4 runner and Tacoma since it has been around 10 years now. KDSS does limit me to 33” tires though.

You also didn’t cover safety on these, mine is a 2008 and it has 16 airbags and weighs almost 7,000lb. I am not worried about a collision with a F350 or anything else in this thing.

Here are a couple pictures of my 2008 from when I towed my wife’s LX470 from Alaska to Georgia earlier this year.

https://imgur.com/gallery/fybBg

Needless to say when they release the next Land Cruiser I will pay 85k+ for a new one.

[u/ruoyuxiong]

"I am the Land Cruiser"

-- Doug Demuro quote of the year

[u/HHcougar]

And in 25 years, this will be running dunes in Saudi Arabia, with all the other Land Cruisers

[u/somepersonlol]

Hey Doug, just wanted to come on here to talk about how @whitesse kinda shouted you out in his Instagram story about reviewing his Koenigsegg Agera RS1. Can you please reach out to him? I know you said you don't like "reaching out" to people, but it kinda seems like an invitation. He also has a Bugatti Veyron Vitesse! Think of all the potential!!

[u/Vespuela]

The greatest car ever built. Totaly not biased opinion.

[u/rsmtirish]

It was so adorable watching Doug smile at the end when he was talking about how he hopes Toyota keeps the Land Cruiser around. He really loves that truck.

[u/oklahoma_stig]

Funny how many features are still the same nearly 10 years later from my 2009 GX470. The nav system options (areas to avoid, etc) the maintenance options in the infotainment system, the seats folding up that way in the back, the mechanical handbrake. Just proof they took the "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" mentality which is awesome.