- 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)
