WeeklySA_AdminLAND CRUISER FJ: The recently launched retro-styled compact Toyota SUV adds some youthful exuberance to the Land Cruiser family without the need to break the bank…
By Ali Mphaki
For people who like to engage in that silly act of taking a walk in the greens while hitting white balls with some sticks and being followed by a heavy-laden fellow along the way it would be relatively easy to associate the acronym FJ with leading brand in footwear – Foot Joy.
The reason is not hard to find for Foot Joy has maintained a leading position as the number one shoe on the PGA Tour – an unsurpassed position held since 1945.
And if true that it is good shoes that maketh a golfer, the sport protagonists in their various handicaps would be quick to point out there are golf shoes and there is Foot Joy.
But in Toyota-speak, FJ stands for Freedom and Joy, and it is this spirit of adventure which Toyota wants to reignite with their all-new Land Cruiser FJ. a rugged, body-on-frame mini-4×4, available in South Africa in GX (R714,000) and VX (R761,400) grades, the latter which we had for road impressions recently.
What Toyota would want us to internalize is that despite its name the all-new model is not a direct successor to the original “ugly duckling” FJ and offers a new take on the brand’s 70-year heritage while appealing to a new generation of Land Cruiser enthusiasts.
If history means anything, the origins of the letter “F” stood for Toyota’s F-series engine type, while “J” originally stood for “Jeep” but later dropped due to litigation issues with the Americans.
Back to the present, ours was in a hue Toyota calls Oxide bronze (as seen in picture) and with its bold, square, iconic Land Cruiser shape, black roof rails, and side steps.
At 4 610 mm long, 1 855 mm wide, and 1 890 mm tall, with a compact 2 580 mm wheelbase, a Toyota-lettered grille and a full-size alloy spare wheel mounted on the tailgate LED headlights, fog lights, and daytime running lights and 265/60 R18 tyres give it that rare knack of making a statement at every angle.
One could easily say the FJ refuses to blend in and it makes it somehow impossible to mistake for anything else.
In my week-long companionship with the FJ I only got the thumbs up from on-lookers and other motorists alike, at one stage forcing a drive of one top-class German sedan to do a double-take at a traffic stop.
Landing your behind on the driver’s seat you immediately become the master of all you survey thanks to its large, upright windscreen and lower beltline for the windows on either side which improves all-round visibility.
To ensure you arrive in style the VX model comes with a sleek leather trim finish, an 8-inch infotainment touchscreen display with Bluetooth and voice control, 7-inch multi-info display, standard ISOFIC child-seat anchors, electric driver seat adjustment (rear seats can also be manually adjustable), an interior shared with its other siblings like the new Prado.
Under the bonnet, Toyota has chosen the tried-and-tested 2.7-litre 4-cylinder petrol with
(Variable Valve Timing with intelligence) churning out 122 kW and 245 Nm which I found to be sufficient even for this vehicle weighing about 2.0 tons.
The six-speed moto goes about its work effortlessly with a claimed fuel economy of 10.7 L/ 100km but depending on our driving style we registered between 11 and 13 L/100km.
With a fuel tank capacity of 63 Litres, expect at current fluctuating rates to pay about R1 800 for a full tank, which Toyota claims has an estimated range of 580 kilometres, a tad too short for a trip from Jozi to eThekwini.
There isn’t much to criticize about the all-new FJ, save for its cramped rear seats, missing rear USB charging port, no standard rear parcel shelf and low payload capacity of roughly 475 kg.
It enters a hot market populated by fresh, feature-packed competitors like the GWM Tank 300 and Jetour T2 but backed by Toyota’s reputation of reliability and durability is likely to win itself more friends and keep them.
As a fun and adventurous lifestyle product it certainly fits the bill.
