Land Cruiser VS Lexus GX 550 - Which Is The BEST Off-Roader? What One Should You Buy?

in today's video we are going to cover the brand new Land Cruiser versus the brand new Lexus and the question is which one is the better SUV Overland platform now this is a pretty big deal to us because we're actually going to be doing a build on one of these at outdoor Auto so we spent a couple weeks built this huge spreadsheet we had to call in favors from people that actually were at the test drive events for these the Lexus put on and Land Cruiser we had to get people to go look at the numbers on actual doors for us I think what we found out was super fascinating and our decision on this is going to probably surprise you if you're new here my name is Nathan Mueller and this is outdoor Auto this channel is all about getting people off-road and outside to explore the outdoors if you're interested in that kind of content we've got lots of videos that are super helpful and lots of videos on adventure so check that out today we are talking about these two vehicles and we're going to jump into one of the bigger differences between the two and that's going to start with the drivetrain when we compare the horsepower and torque numbers for these two vehicles they are shockingly similar but that's where the similarities start to fall apart after that seems like everything's different first of all when you look at the Land Cruiser on the Land Cruiser we've got a 2.4 L inline 4 cylinder turbocharged engine that is also a hybrid so they're adding about another 50 horsepower to that engine using the hybrid motor it is actually getting pretty good fuel economy compared to the Lexus when you look at the Lexus the Lexus has a completely different Powerhouse it has a V6 that is twin turboed this is the same V6 that's in the new Tundras but it actually has smaller turbos than the new tundra so they aren't trying to eek quite as much power out of it and there isn't a hybrid available right now there's a rumor that there will be one available eventually because obviously they have that for the tundra I don't know if they'll do that though because with Lexus they've always traditionally stuck with really solid engines that aren't overtaxed and aren't pushing their output too high so they're extremely reliable one of the things about Lexus that everybody kind of gets wrong in America is if you say what is the most reliable vehicle in the United States based on actual scientific data like when they study the whole entire database of DMV vehicles that get registered and how long they last on the road before they fall off and disappear the most reliable badge brand of any vehicle in the United States is actually Lexus now Toyota motor who owns Lexus does have more vehicles in the top 10 than any other brand of vehicle so that's one reason why they like to claim that top spot but the actual top reli most reliable vehicle in the United States is the Lexus and you can kind of see why in a weird way you go well they got a V6 that's a bigger engine but in a reality it's the more conservative route they went with the V6 they didn't try to pump nearly as much power out of it which is helpful for longevity um so we have a V6 versus a 4-cylinder engine and somehow there's almost parody on horsepower and torque the problem with that though in classic Toyota style is the Lexus gets what in my opinion for for modern-day Vehicles gets really terrible gas mileage so this is like like I was saying this is where the similarities between the two vehicles all of a sudden start to fall apart the Lexus is actually paired with a 10speed uh automatic transmission whereas the Land Cruiser only has a 8-speed however it's still the more efficient fuel vehicle which is interesting because of the hybrid but when you go down to the mileage check out these mileage numbers the thing that's super fascinating is on Highway they're really not all that different from each other so you get some efficiency out of that V6 engine once you're moving and not stopping and going but man in town driving it is just it just totally falls apart City MPG for the Lexus is only 15 mil per gallon versus 22 on the Land Cruiser the Lexus has a 21 gallon fuel tank and then the Land Cruiser has a 17.9 G fuel tank check out the disparity okay let's talk off-road capability this is one of those categories where I really thought the Land Cruiser was probably going to shine and probably jump into the lead the Land Cruiser has always been more geared towards off-roading um it's been one of their most reliable vehicles that Toyota's ever put out um so I'm a big lay Cruiser fan I mean I have this one I've got that one I've got this one uh some of these are just projects that when I'm done with them obviously I'm going to sell them I'm not a car collector but if you look at I I really like Land Cruisers obviously although one of those Land Cruisers is the 80 series that is in fact actually the Lexus model but when we jump into the Land Cruiser it did get some big improvements this year one of the coolest things that it got is it got the disconnecting sway bar and Toyota enthusiasts we've been asking for this for years uh like Jeeps have had them forever uh the new Broncos have disconnecting sway bars finally they stuck one in the Land Cruiser so you've got a front sway bar that will disconnect on the land Cruiser when you hit the button that will allow more droop and more articulation in your front tires when you're going through those slow speed uh off camber obstacles so you're going to be able to maintain traction a lot better but when you jump over to the Lexus we don't really have a on toone comparison at all when you jump over to the Lexus they change the system over there as well but the system that they were using was a system called kdss which is kinetic Dynamic suspension system so it was a hydraulic mechanical system that was connected from the front to your rear tires and when you were articulating and there was pressure pushing up on this side it would push down on the other side and it was trying to compensate for those off cambera moments the problem with that is when you are off-roading in a rock garden it's not always a one to one where because you have pressure pushing up on the back tire you need to droop the front tire it doesn't always work that way when you're carving your way through you know a bunch of rocks so it it it's not actually a great off-road system it's a pretty good system for bumpy roads highspeed driving on roads not so great for true true off-roading so with Alexus they decided to redesign it this year so they added what's called e kdss which is an electronic kdss system so that's what they gave us now when you're in your driving modes for off-roading and you're going under certain speeds this is basically going to just serve as a disconnecting sway bar but it's not really disconnecting it's just turning the system off essentially so now it's almost as if you're driving a vehicle with no sway bars so there is kind of a huge benefit here the other thing that's super fascinating is Toyota was or Lexus was so excited about this Innovation they actually published the articulation numbers for the GX and they were saying that it can articulate at over 24 in which is phenomenal for a stock vehicle uh it's crazy how good that is it's a huge Improvement they actually showed you compared to the last two generations of of the GX and it was just a massive improvement over each so that's pretty exciting the interesting thing is I can't tell you what the articulation numbers are for the Land Cruiser and the other thing is we don't really know exactly how they're measuring that I know that they're scientists enough to however they were measuring to get that 24 number they're measuring the previous lexuses the same way but we don't know where they're measuring from cuz there's other videos out there like Kai over uh on tinker Venture he measured it and he came up with like 19.8 um and you even talked to them about it and they're like well we're not measuring it that way and he's like well okay it's hard but even 19.8 if you compare that to measuring it the same way on other ones it shows a massive Improvement of the platform so we can't really tell you right now whether the Land Cruiser or the Lexus has more articulation but the fact that the Lexus IS advertising their number and bragging about it a lot and the fact that they don't publish it on the Land Cruiser my guess is that it probably has more articulation than the Land Cruiser and it would make sense with the differences in the technology that they have but I don't know that for sure so this is one of those ones we're all just going to have to eventually wait and see some other quick hits when it comes to off-road capability both of these vehicles in the the models that we're talking about come with Center locking diffs so even if they're all time four-wheel drive you are able to lock that Center differential to turn it into a true four-wheel drive and you're also going to have a rear Locker neither of them has an option for a front Locker so at this point they're both a wash exactly on what they have same features when we jump over to approach angle breakover angle and departure angle the Lexus obviously is a little bit longer so you have not quite as good of an approach angle uh it's going to be 31° on the Land Cruiser and uh 26° on the Lexus the other the departure angle and breakover angle are almost identical the only difference there is depending on whether or not you're getting like upgraded skid plates or not so almost a wash there um the one thing that's really important about the Land Cruiser versus Lexus argument is if you're planning on buying one of these vehicles and modifying it if you look at the bumper of the Lexus versus The Land Cruiser the Land Cruiser is going to be way easier to modify they modularize the front of it to where there's these three pieces that you're going to be able to take off and all the aftermarket companies are obviously is going to be making bolt-on bumpers that take wenches that will fit right into that exact same spot so it's going to be a lot easier vehicle to modify the front of you're not going to be like cutting a big piece of plastic and then just trying to fit things in like we have in the past on the other lexuses so they didn't really translate the awesome modular thing that they did to the Land Cruiser they didn't really translate that to the Lexus the other big number when we're talking approaching departure angles is of course clearance you're going to have 8.9 in of clearance on the Lexus and weirdly the Land Cruiser has multiple numbers published on Toyota's own sites right now I've seen it as low as 8 in and I've seen it as high as 8.7 on nothing have I seen it as high as the 8.9 of the Lexus so technically the Lexus appears to actually have a tiny bit more clearance than the Land Cruiser some of the difference between the 8 in and 8.7 could be the skid plate packages because they have these aftermarket heavyduty steel skid plates you can get for the Land Cruiser and I'm curious if they're just saying the difference between whether you have those on and don't have them on I always kind of was under the impression that I thought the gx550 was going to be a decent bit bigger than the Land Cruiser and it really isn't it's a couple inches longer but it's actually an inch narrower and then if you look at these numbers here it's almost identical in height so these are very similarly sized Vehicles that's just going to have to do with the shape and everything there and that is of course the storage that is behind the rear seat okay let's talk tires brakes and wheels real fast uh these both come with identical tires from the factory so you're talking a 26570 18 it's a tire that they worked with the manufacturer so that size tire if you do the math on it is usually a 32.6 in tire but they're saying they worked with the manufacturer and that it is a true 33 in tire we'll see I get told tires are a true size all the time and when you measure them they almost never are so it's going to be somewhere between 32 1/2 in to a 33in tire on both of them that's identical when you talk about brakes it's going to be disc brakes all around uh the Lexus has a 13.9 in rotor on the front and a little bit smaller 12.6 on the back if you check the Land Cruiser the Land Cruiser says that it has 17-in rotors on the front and rear which is of course a lie because that's on an 18-in rim and you can't stick a 17in rotor and stick a caliper on top of that and fit that inside of that wheel so somebody's messing up on their measurements there my hunch is that these are very similar vehicles and that they probably share the same size rotors with each other as far as exterior options that have to do with off-roading um the Land Cruiser definitely was boasting that it had the option for some heavyduty aftermarket steel skids it talks about it but as of yesterday when I was looking at they were not priced out and available on the site so we don't know how much they'll cost as far as Lexus it doesn't appear that they have anything like that so you're going to be working with the aftermarket if you're going to armor up down there more than what comes standard um they both come standard with a certain amount of skid plates they both have an option for rock rails like actual real Rock sliders from the factory which is pretty cool identical price 9.90 either one um and then as far as fog lights when you're looking at that mid version of The Land Cruiser that has the off-road package like with the disconnecting sway bar it automatically comes with fog lights those are the rigid lights and then the Lexus comes with its own fog lights as well I don't know brand they are those seem to be an oem fog light so the exterior is pretty similar again somewhat of a wash between the two I wouldn't be surprised just like you can see with the with the skid plates though the aftermarket is going to respond quicker to providing you with stuff likely for the Land Cruiser than they will for the Lexus uh we've seen the lexus's popularity grow as an Overland and off-road vehicle so that's going to help speed it up but like from the first couple months that these are out I think you're going to see a lot more stuff come to market for the Land Cruiser okay so let's talk payload and towing this is going to be pretty quick the towing for the Land Cruiser is at 6,000 lb uh if you look at the Lexus online it says that it's 8 but then for some reason if you check the the Lexus over Trail they're saying that it's nine at least that's what the engineers are saying so I haven't got a straight answer whether it's eight or nine but if you went to the the Lexus event where where they had the engineers there for the Lexus they said overt tril has 9,000 lb of Towing we'll see there I noticed even yesterday when I was playing around in the configurator on both of these it froze and locked me out for a while and then when it came back it had made updates so they're very new to being live and it seems like they're updating it every day we're talking a difference of like 6,000 lb to either 8 or 9,000 lb that's really significant if you're going to tow some kind of big RV trailer or anything like that the other thing is payload as far as the amount of weight that the vehicle itself you can vehicle gear you know everyone builds these Overland vehicles and they're really all overloaded and they're way over their payload so when you look at the amount of payload that these cars offer these these vehicles offer it's really similar actually uh we had to go pull numbers off the lexus's door cuz again the stats that were online you could just tell they didn't really make sense it seems like they needed to update it but every car that is shipped in the United States to be sold it's government regulated they have to to put a sticker on it that says the actual payload for that unique vehicle based on the options that were put on that car so on the overt Trail not the overt tril plus but the standard overt tril Edition the door sticker said that it had 1,545 uh pounds of payload if you think about that that's pretty good my Tundra door sticker is only 1,300 something so it actually has more payload than my Tundra on the Lexus overt Trail when you jump over to the Land Cruiser the land Cruiser's number was even more impressive it was in the like 1680 range depending on the features that you picked uh like when you upgraded the premium package and you adds in the leather and a couple little things there that drops a little bit but it's still staying ahead of the Lexus so good payload numbers on both of these if you plan on doing an Overland build you have more to work with than a full-size Tundra truck when it comes to storage the Lexus has managed to work in more storage you're going to have 37 1/2 cubic feet of storage on the Land Cruiser versus 45.6 cubic feet of storage on the Lexus oh yeah that leads us to the interior and the reason that the interior is such a big topic is this influences pricing on these when we're trying to compare them as close to Apples to Apples as we can uh interior stuff becomes almost the place where it's almost impossible to see eye to eye so for example the the land cruise is going to come with cloth seats and for a lot of people that Overland and live in their truck for days on end and are spilling stuff like leather seats are a necessity the problem is you can't just upgrade just leather seats in order to upgrade to leather on the Land Cruiser you have to go with what's called a premium package upgrade that costs 5500 bucks and it ends up giving you leather seats it ends up giving you a moon roof um it gives you a wireless charger for your phone it just gives you a couple other tiny little knickknacks like that I would definitely upgrade the Land Cruiser to the leather cuz that's a must especially with children and overlanding and off-roading uh basically because of messes um but the moon roof that gets thrown in for like 850 bucks is what it looks like as a line item for that you can't choose you can't opt out you're stuck with it on the Lexus however it already comes with higher end finishes so it comes with a bigger screen instead of a 12. uh 6 in screen it comes with a 14in screen or I'm sorry a 12.3 in screen it comes with a 14-in screen it already comes with leather your dash materials and everything they're actually similar materials but if you look at one and look at the other it just feels higher end that makes sense it's Lexus it is their higher-end vehicle so you have a little bit higher-end finishes inside the vehicle um but one thing that's cool on the Lexus IS you can actually uh there's an option to remove the sunroof and uh save or the moon roof and save 1,00 bucks so I know it's not 100% apples to app but going with the middle Land Cruiser cuz that gives you the off-road stuff to be on the same page uh and then going with the premium package to be able to get the the leather seats and everything and then removing the moon roof on the Lexus side that's about the closest build that I can do between them that I'm not just adding in stuff and paying for stuff that I don't really see any point in you're you're going to have to play with the configurator yourself so when we compare them with these configurations the Lexus comes in at $69,500 if we jump over to the Land Cruiser with these options it comes in at 67,900 total difference between those two vehicles of $1,555 basically $1,500 bucks a $1,500 difference between a Land Cruiser with some options added to pull it on par and and the Lexus with one option removed and that's what we end up with $1,500 difference I think with these two vehicles it truly comes down a little bit to a coin flip depending on which of those features that are different from car to car actually spoke to you so the question is what is the right car for you I've looked at these and weighed the differences enough that I know what is the right one for my family and what I'm going to go with and we're going to do a separate video on that in our members page we'll let everyone know about the upcoming build we actually have two upcoming builds on this channel so if you ever want to know that stuff ahead of time that goes out to the Members First uh but obviously if you don't want to join our member page that's totally fine you're eventually going to be able to watch the videos when we do these builds um but yeah check that out I'm very curious I want to know what you would pick and why you would pick it would you pick the Land Cruiser or would you pick the Lexus and what are your reasons for making that choice it was a lot closer than I thought it would be I thought one car would very obvious viously pull way far ahead and it it really didn't work that way for me they really are very very similar vehicles

Channel: Outdoor Auto

Views: 47,780

Keywords: Overlanding, 2024 lexus gx 550, 2024 lexus gx, 2024 land cruiser, lexus gx, lexus gx 2024, land cruiser prado, toyota land cruiser, land cruiser 2024, 2024 toyota land cruiser, 2024 lexus gx review, 2024 lexus gx 550 review, Land Cruiser review, Land Cruiser vs Lexus GX 550, Lexus Gx 550 Overtrail, Overtrail, sway bar disconnect, e kdss toyota, e-kdss vs kdss, overlanding, off-road, 4x4, camping, car camping, overland build, truck build, land cruiser build, Lexus build

Id: U8JsDBmcznk

Length: 20min 6sec (1206 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2024