My view is that as members of this forum, our expectations from our vehicles is as diverse as the rest of the population.
Within our membership, we have folks who want their Land Cruisers to be pristine and as standard as Mr T intended,
@Dervis Garip for example, if he doesn’t mind being named. His truck is superb and getting finer with every day of ownership.
At the other extreme are the
@Jon Wildsmith ’s, who have off roaded to the extreme, to the point of eventual demise, some of his older threads have been superb.
A lot of us like me, are somewhere in between. My truck pleases me no end, its old, far from “comfortable” by modern standards, but I can drive it all day with the same silly grin from beginning to end.
It’s thirsty, I could treble the miles per gallon I get simply by picking up the “other set of keys” when leaving the apartment each morning, but I wouldn’t enjoy the drive to work, or to anywhere, like I enjoy driving the truck.
A pristine truck would scare me to death, a 9 year old scuffing about in the back with her muddy boots dropping sweets and crisps into the upholstery. So a new Cruiser wouldn’t be on my list at all, way too scary to spend some EURO 90k to be too worried about damaging it, I’d get very little pleasure from that.
I can play with it too, be a bit adventurous with add-ons and custom accessories, I wouldn’t want to be drilling holes in the roof of a new one to mount a light bar, would I?
Many on here do overlanding, and almost all of us join them on their adventures from the comfort of our settees. What a vehicle to be so versatile, there’s very few brands out there that can boast the same diversity of use and enjoyment as a Land Cruiser.
Yes, they all break at some time, but we get the parts and fit them, or pay someone to do it, and lets face it, most of the genuine parts we fit will outlive the rest of the truck, not like some we could mention, replacing stuff over and over.
I dream of a bit more power sometimes, more speed, more agility, more comfort, but then (after a slap) I realize that that’s not what it’s about... not for me at any rate.
They can keep their evoke’s and velcro’s, X6’s and whatever, they pass me on the way to work and I get there just as quick. I tow them out of the snow, and drive past them in a ditch on the side of the road when its icy.
Good luck to them I say, enjoy...