Toyota LandCruiser 300: Why the media is so wrong about this vehicle
The motoring media is gushing over the new LandCruiser, trying to keep Toyota happy. But as a consumer, this means you’re not getting the full story...
Do not rush out and buy the new 300 Series Toyota Landcruiser. Let some other early adopter be the lab rat in this curious experiment. Wait at least 12 months before walking into this risky, $100,000 potential disaster.
AutoExpert is happy to get you a discount on a new Landcruiser, but this really could be a bad idea.
This is part I of a two-part series dedicated to why you should stay out of the LandCruiser 300 queue now. If you’re a LC200 Series owner, and you are drooling all over a new 300 Series, my strong advice is: Don’t.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to hold your horses because the media is gushing. The unbridled hype is bordering on outright propaganda, which is undignified and doesn’t give you, the consumer, the full picture.
Let’s give you the context on LandCruiser 300 now, so you can better understand how bad incentives in the motoring media lead to reports that just gush, and don’t ask any hard questions or make critical observations.
Most publications fail to acknowledge any glaring deficiencies, and they only repeat Toyota’s press release information, while at the same time teasing you into buying one.
In Part II of this report, you can learn why the LC300 engine could be a lemon >>, which is a real risk; one you should manage with discretion, by letting others beta test Toyota’s twin-turbo V6 diesel first.
In the case of LandCruiser 300, this could be a $100,000+ mistake for you.
Even if you’re a bolted-on Toyota enthusiast, it doesn’t matter if you think this report is heresy. That’s irrelevant. You might think that you’re doing ‘research’ online, reading all those favourable reports in the mainstream motoring media. Have you actually stopped and critically assessed what’s being said, as well as what’s missing, and the forces operating commercially, under the surface, effectively constraining what is said?
You’re not getting the full story. The impartial assessment. The hard Q&A.
Here is an example, which is common to just about every 300 Series report you can read right now. Apparently, it’s about weight-saving:
Practical Motoring is clearly very excited for the new LandCruiser, but if you review this statement from Toyota through the filter of ‘facts’, you quickly see it’s not that much of a saving. The kerb weight of a 200 Series Sahara Horizon is 2.74 tonnes. It’s massive, that vehicle.
In context then, even saving 200kgs, we’re still talking about a weight reduction of ‘up to’ just seven per cent. That’s using an all-new platform, with new engines, aluminium roof, lightweight bumpers, and so-called ‘revolutionary’ laser welding techniques.
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Why critical analysis is important
As for the welding of that thick, heavy ladder frame, Toyota Motor Company welding luminary Yasuhiro Yoshihara says:
This quote was reported in CarExpert, a relatively ‘new’ motoring outlet albeit run by the former CarAdvice honchos - so they know how this game is played. This reporting, if you can call it that, basically took all the TMC’s promo video and put the captions into text. It’s essentially just a transcript of the LC300 propaganda, published on their website. Talk about an easy ride.
Toyota’s talking heads basically run quote after quote, unchallenged, with zero critical feedback or analysis, despite mentioning the engine and transmission, the chassis, the suspension.
As for the welding aspect, are we seriously suggesting that after 14 protracted years of 200 Series warbling across the Nullabor, and by using all this purportedly revolutionary technology, the craftsmen, lopping off two cylinders and using glue, the best Toyota could manage was seven per cent weight reduction? That’s a joke. Toyota is the biggest car company in the world, with endless resources, armies of engineers on every continent.
Toyota has seen automotive manufacturing improve immensely in fourteen years, including materials technology and manufacturing technique advances, the development of gigapascal steel, hot forming of critical joints, composites, bonding techniques.
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To look at a 200 Series is to look back in time. You’re seeing automotive technology from at least 15 long years ago - back when George W. Bush was in the White House. Have Toyota really only come seven per cent forward in a decade and a half? Nobody is saying this in the motoring media. Nobody’s even asking the question whether Toyota has done enough.
Nobody in the media, to my knowledge, is calling Toyota out, not even for still building this vehicle on a ladder frame. In 2021.
Toyota has seen automotive manufacturing improve immensely in fourteen years, including materials technology and manufacturing technique advances, the development of gigapascal steel, hot forming of critical joints, composites, bonding techniques.
To look at a 200 Series is to look back in time. You’re seeing automotive technology from at least 15 long years ago - back when George W. Bush was in the White House. Have Toyota really only come seven per cent forward in a decade and a half? Nobody is saying this in the motoring media. Nobody’s even asking the question whether Toyota has done enough.
Nobody in the media, to my knowledge, is calling Toyota out, not even for still building this vehicle on a ladder frame - in 2021. For a vehicle that needs to see out the next decade. In 2030, the LandCruiser will still be the big, heavy ladder-frame vehicle it was in 2021.
The priority here, for Toyota, is clearly not weight saving, in my view. These Toyota claims are just spin and the media is simply publishing it without scrutiny. Toyota’s priority, it seems to me, is doing the absolute minimum required to sell more (expensive) LandCruisers.
This was the front and rear axle weight distribution of the 200 Series, which the main media outlets haven’t referenced…
Toyota hasn’t even improved that ‘nose-heavy feeling’ by more than 2% - there’s still a big V6TT out front, and it’s now heavier at the rear.
This regurgitation of the press releases, the complete absence of the hard question, which is prolific in the mainstream outlets like Whichcar, CarsGuide, CarAdvice. They all want Toyota’s advertising revenue, the press cars and to be invited on the big local launch. All of this is a gross disservice to you, because this is so-called journalism simply functions as a defacto PR service for Toyota. Outsourced, discount spin-doctoring, basically.
Where is the counterpoint? You’re reading it now, I’d suggest. And you won’t be getting it anywhere else. Because none of these media outlets has the balls to objectively assess the LandCruiser 300 on behalf of the consumer.
Toyota, and other carmakers, routinely hold media outlets to ransom. The unwritten threat is no advertising revenue, no press launch, no ‘exclusive’ one-on-one chit-chat interviews, and you won’t get a long-term press vehicle to test (and subsidise your personal transport for two months). They don’t say this because it’s a monumentally bad incentive they don’t want made public.
Undoubtedly, the blue-singlet dicks are going to say, ‘How dare you criticise this vehicle before you drive it?’ But, of course, nobody’s driven it yet. Not outside of Toyota, at least. I’m not criticising its dynamics, or the operational characteristics of the powertrain, or the ride quality, or the NVH, or the off-road ability - because that’s what driving it will tell you.
I’m criticising its fundamental engineering, which I am qualified to do, unlike the majority of motoring reporters. This report is critical of Toyota’s lax engineering which we already know a considerable amount about.
For the record, I’m pretty sure that, behind the wheel, the 300 will be better than the 200 it replaces. Otherwise they will have done an emphatically crap job. Imagine if they built the all-new LandCruiser 300 and it’s worse than the 15-year-old tank known as the 200 Series.
Speaking of the LandCruiser 300’s fundamental engineering:
That’s Toyota’s chief of the off-road, Akihiro Osaka, as reported by ‘CarExpert’ there as they busily fail to be me, again, by not having a single piece of technical reply. And it’s barely an admission that the old LandCruiser was flawed.
Nobody will actually come out and say, “The LandCruiser 200 is really a heavy bastard, and we probably should have tried to make it lighter than 7 per cent when designing the new 300.”
It’s also hilarious that the only time carmaker insiders get to throw the old car under the bus, or even tangentially admit its deficiencies, is just before the new one hits the showroom. What a coincidence.
And in roughly 2060 - when the 400 Series is finally in the wings, somebody will concede that the 300 is just a hippo with a towbar, in exactly the same way they’re discussing the 200.
They also won’t admit (and nor will the mainstream motoring media highlight) that the Mitsubishi Pajero, about to be retired to the history books, is a perfectly good example of a heavy towing platform, with good off-road capability (for the majority or buyers) which manages just fine with “a lightweight and highly rigid monocoque body with a built-in ladder frame”. Pajero Exceed weighs 2.7 tonnes, but is a 20-year-old design. Imagine if Toyota has just applied itself.
And nowhere in these Toyota-appeasing articles do they acknowledge the deficiency of the 200 Series with its other rival, the Nissan Patrol, which is also a massive, heavy ladder-frame 4x4 born from the same era, with a platform going back 15 years.
The difference being Nissan has asked $90K-$100K for the Patrol Ti-L and offered, for years, tech the market expects now, like adaptive cruise control, auto-emergency braking and a 360 camera (for starters) - none of which Toyota could be bothered putting into the LandCruiser despite asking $30-$40,000 more.
You won’t hear many motoring journalists acknowledge the Nissan Patrol is the better land cruiser.
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Conclusion: Look for what’s not being said
Before you go paying a deposit, let’s wait and see if Toyota has fixed those ‘dusting’ issues, shall we?
Unfortunately, when you’re reading these half-arsed reports, they’re hacking directly into your brain and triggering your confirmation bias so you believe buying a new 300 LandCruiser is not only a good idea but also an absolutely essential undertaking for you.
But you have to ask if those publications’ priority is to help you make the right call with your $100,000, or to keep Toyota happy? It cannot be both. I’ve said the same thing about Wheels magazine in recent history, and look how that publication is doing...
Discretion is the better part of valour, especially when it comes to this new V6 diesel with its hot vee design, which, again, the media is gushing over, with all these purported advantages. But it could easily be a hand grenade with a loose pin, in my view. Wanna know why? Let’s just say Toyota’s got plenty of recent form, botching far simpler engineering implementations. It’s called a fact.
At the end of the day I don’t want to see you (and your family) sidelined with your mighty 300, wearing your best singlet, steel capped safety thongs and your decanted effluent box. Are they still called ‘caravans’?
On the balance of probability, Toyota just can’t do it and early adopters are at risk of problems plaguing the new LandCruiser 300. I sincerely believe this to be true. The good thing for you is, I will report on it, just as I have done over the years, so you can make an informed choice with your money.
Even if Toyota offers me $500k in advertising (unlikely, but even if they do), just to get me hooked or silenced (or both) it’s gonna be a brief, two-word conversation. Starts with ‘F’, ends in ‘... uck off’.
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