Toyota bids adieu to Land Cruiser; Lexus off-roader a possibility

The Toyota Land Cruiser — a international icon for off-roading fanatics with a lineage that stretches again to postwar Japan and a modest but devoted consumer base — will stop its sixty three-12 months run in the U.S. after the current model 12 months.

But that isn’t going to imply the automaker is ceding the luxury massive-SUV place. It truly is just that no matter what the Land Cruiser’s non secular successor finishes up becoming, you can find a good chance it can be likely to crawl and climb with a Lexus badge on its grille.

“The Toyota Land Cruiser has been a famous title for extra than 60 yrs,” Toyota Motor North The united states claimed in a assertion. “Though it will be discontinued in the United States after the 2021 model 12 months, we continue being fully commited to the massive-SUV segment and will go on to explore future products that celebrate the Land Cruiser’s abundant off-street heritage. We stimulate faithful fanatics and intrepid adventurers to continue to be tuned for future developments.”

The Land Cruiser — created in Japan in 1951 as a localized solution to the Willys Jeep — is Toyota’s longest-managing model line and is inexorably tied to Toyota since its quite 1st times in the U.S. According to Toyota, in its 1st 12 months in the U.S. in 1958, the company bought 288 Toyota Toyopet sedans and precisely just one Land Cruiser.

Sales have ebbed and flowed in the intervening a long time in the U.S. as other rugged overlanders have proliferated. The $86,880 starting off price tag (together with shipping) of the two- or a few-row entire body-on-body SUV also is greater than that of many opponents. Still, the Land Cruiser, imported from Japan, retains a international pursuing as perfectly as a consistent U.S. gross sales record. More than the earlier 15 yrs in the U.S., dealers have bought an common of 2,979 Land Cruisers per 12 months, with a high of three,801 in 2008 and a very low of one,662 in 2011. In 2020, Toyota bought three,147 Land Cruisers.

Jack Hollis, head of automotive operations at Toyota Motor North The united states, explained to Automotive Information past month that the sudden reputation in off-street adventuring brought on, in part, by the pandemic has each individual manufacturer staring off the pavement for opportunities.

“What we have seen at Toyota is that you can find so considerably of an hunger for [off-roading] that I see that [going into] the Lexus manufacturer as perfectly,” Hollis claimed. “There is an hunger, a consumer wish, a consumer drive to see all brand names providing them extra selections. I imagine it would be foolish for Lexus not to travel down that path.”