With a trailer hooked up, the Land Cruiser's driving demeanor radically changed, and it came into its element as a true truck. Our Toyota made multiple long-distance trips to tow nonrunning automotive purchases to their new homes. With the extra weight out back, the floaty ride settled down and high-speed stability improved, enhancing passenger comfort. Senior Web editor Phil Floraday returned to Michigan with a 1995 Ford F-150 in tow behind the Land Cruiser, using about 7000 pounds of the 8500-pound towing capacity. After tackling Kentucky's sizable hills, Floraday praised the Prodigy trailer-brake controller and made ample use of the six-speed automatic's manual mode. "We never dropped below the speed limit while climbing, and we were easily able to maintain the limit while descending, which isn't always easy," Floraday noted. "The ability to manually select gears was very helpful."
Toyota's 381-hp, 5.7-liter V-8, which debuted in the new Tundra pickup, eagerly moves the Land Cruiser and received nothing but raves. The engine and the transmission work together seamlessly and perform with an impressive level of refinement. Providing thunderous acceleration anywhere in the rev range, the engine's thrust was more sports car than SUV. In our testing, the speedy Toyota sprinted to 60 mph in an incredible 6.4 seconds.
But moving 5920 pounds with that type of gusto doesn't come without a price. We averaged 15 mpg over our twelve months of driving, exactly matching the EPA's combined mileage rating. In Europe, Toyota offers the Land Cruiser with a 4.5-liter turbo-diesel that makes some 280 hp and 480 lb-ft of torque. Although it may not propel the Land Cruiser off the line as quickly, that engine still makes impressive power, and Toyota claims it returns 23 mpg. We want it.
Our Cruiser's 15-mpg habit meant spending plenty of dough at the gas station, but the Toyota's overly pessimistic range indicator had us stopping there even more than necessary. After filling the 24.6-gallon tank, the trip computer claimed about 290 miles to empty, but the SUV proved capable of traveling much farther than that. Creative director Darin Johnson drove forty-five miles on an indicated fifteen-mile range. But the less sanguine, or less Land Cruiser-savvy, were sometimes alarmed. "I risked truck and limb fueling the big Cruiser late at night in the bowels of Detroit because the display calculated my fuel range to be four miles," wrote copy editor Rusty Blackwell. "And then I had a hard time finding the release for the fuel-filler door." ...next page >>