Sure, some Toyota cars rival luxurious European brands

I have been an ardent reader of your motoring columns and really love them. Please make me understand what is happening: I have for a long time believed that Toyotas were cheap cars without the sophistication of Ferraris or the elegance and style of German machines. Toyotas were meant to be for ordinary folks who wanted to drive without breaking the bank. But of late I am amazed at the way high-profile individuals like politicians (including the president!) have embraced the Toyota Landcruiser V8 and Prados. My questions are:

1. Have Toyotas become so good that they can be preferable to their more stately Western Europe counterparts?

2. Between the Toyota Landcruiser V8 (Sahara model) and the supercharged Range Rover Vogue V8, which is the better car in terms of performance, power, off-road capabilities, price, etc.

3. Is the Lexus LX 570 any better than the Landcruiser V8, apart from the cosmetic additions?

4. The Landcruiser V8 has become just as expensive as the more stately supercharged Range Rover Vogue. Is it worth the price, or are Toyota and its dealers taking advantage of the higher demand for their cars?

James Radido

Hello James Radido,
You are not so far off about Toyotas, but you are not exactly on the mark either. Toyota as a brand covers a wide array of automotive niches, up to and including, but not limited to attempts at personal mobility (in essence, snazzy, wireless, Internet-enabled wheelchairs for the fit and healthy). So now:

1. Toyotas have always been good, they are not just discovering the plot now.

Off the top of my head I can rattle off a chain of platform codes and engine designations that make Toyota one of the greatest car companies ever: 2JZ-GTE, AE86, HZJ80, JZA80, 1VD-FTV, 4AGE etc,etc. (enough of that). I think what you meant to ask was “Have Toyotas become so luxurious that they can stand in for their more stately Western Europe counterparts?”

The answer is yes and no.

Right on the cusp of one of mankind’s greatest decades, the final 10 years before the curtains closed on the 20th Century, the Japanese economy entered a bubble that allowed them to go mad, and lose their marbles they did, in spectacular fashion. One of the results was the creation of the Lexus brand in 1989, a snobby, high-society department within Toyota with one sole purpose to its existence: the downfall of Mercedes-Benz as king of the hill in the rarefied, big money, luxury performance atmosphere.

The result was a line of exceptionally well-built cars that overturned the luxury car market and forced the German hegemony to restrategize and reposition itself or face extinction in short order. The original Lexus line was based on pre-existing Toyota cars.

Today? Toyota cars (and their Lexus cousins) are as almost as good as, or in some cases better, than the European standard, depending on how pragmatic the buyer is. However, there is something that will always hold them back – the same thing that leads indiscriminate buyers to fall victim to such cack as a BMW X6/Mercedes GLC and the like, and that thing is brand identity.

Gravitas cannot be bought; it is only acquired, and the Germans had a 100-year head start before Lexus came into existence. Lexus joined the game already hobbled by its parent company’s street cred as purveyor of cheap compacts. That is a stench not easily shed, no matter how strong the essence of luxury and performance in its cologne. It has been an uphill battle for the circled L for 28 years, but they are finally there. The Lexus brand finally carries the weight that traditional European marques wielded.

2. So Toyota Landcruiser vs Range Rover, both V8s. Should be interesting:
Performance: the Range Rover is faster because it is more powerful and more compact. Also, because I have driven both vehicles and that supercharged Range Rover actually is insanely, almost scarily, fast. It pulls like an electric train on excess voltage. The dimensions and platform design (monocoque chassis vs truck frame) also give the Range Rover better dynamics in terms of handling and braking. The Rangie wins.
Power:see“Performance” above. The actual figures stand at 383hp for the maximum Landcruiser, the one with the 5.7 litre engine which is not sold here, versus ...err... which particular supercharged Range Rover would you like to compare it to? The 4.2 litre L322? That did 400hp. The 5.0? That one stands at 510hp. The current L405 can still hold its own, packing 380hp with two fewer cylinders and at 3.0 litres, almost half the Landcruiser’s capacity.

This is where we rake the muck. Any member from each team will come up with YouTube videos showing some highly convoluted and heavily biased tests in which one of the two contenders dominates the other. That is all nonsense; get the word from someone whose exposure is impeccable: the Range Rover is the better off-road car. It just is. A fortnight ago, I took the Landcruiser to pieces for selling out and becoming a one-upping, show-off, suburban posemobile at the expense of off-road talent, and I meant it. It again boils down to the dimensions: the Range Rover is more compact and easier to manoeuvre. The Landcruiser has become too big, too heavy and too clumsy to get out of its own way, and the body kits that festoon them nowadays are just expensive hems that will get snagged in the briers if the showgirl opts to get her feet dirty. Land Rover has also been in the terrain response game a bit longer than Toyota and it shows. While Land Rover’s terrain response and HDC systems are all housed under one umbrella, Toyota’s version has to be a tag-team effort among the CRAWL system, downhill assist control, multi-terrain ABS and KDSS (please don’t make me spell out these acronyms, they are tiring).

What people get mixed up is “reliability” versus “off-road ability”. A Land Rover failing off-road (as it inevitably will) is not a symptom of off-road inability, it just shows that they can (and should) be better made, but they still rule the roost when the going gets military. Do you strip Mr Universe of his bodybuilding title simply because he caught a cold?
Price: calculate this: buy two top-of-the-line Landcruisers and two Range Rovers and your invoice slides nicely into nine figures. This is a big boys’ club. The pricing is broadly similar; both cars will cost you north of Sh22 million apiece brand new and typing out that statement makes my eyes water so let us move on...

The better car? That will have to be the Landcruiser. The Rangie may be sexier, more luxurious and better to drive, but the Landcruiser has a higher uptime and comparatively tamer running costs, and in the world of motor vehicles, uptime is everything.

3. Not exactly, but it depends on which particular LX570 you refer to.

There has been one but there have been three. This may sound like a sleepy nursery school child trying to count out loud, but let me explain:
The original LX570, which came out when the 200 Series Landcruiser was fresh out of the box was broadly similar to its Toyota donor car, so the difference between it and a highly specced VX/ZX/AX was marginal at best. The LX570 was then facelifted, acquiring a few more features. Whether or not these features made it superior to the donor Landcruiser is the subject of conjecture because they are mostly things you don’t actually need in a car and are just there for the invariably dentist/venture capitalist owner to have a contribution to make at the golf club when the discussion finally comes around to who bought which car for his heavily pampered suburban wife – that last statement was not me being obtuse. Owning a Lexus comes with its own form of anthropological baggage; these are the actual lengths badge whores go to in search of justification for their sometimes unwise purchases.

There was a second facelift for the model, which made it decidedly worse than before. The vehicle, diametrically opposite of “lean” to start with, unbelievably added even more weight, occasioned by even more unnecessary stuff. The amount of brightwork and below-knee cladding went up as well; increasing the number of trinkets one will expensively leave in their wake should one wander down a path slightly more adventurous than a shopping mall parking lot or a private school driveway. It is surprisingly cramped inside for something so massive externally. Fuel economy is an oxymoron. Rear visibility is nonexistent. The car is needlessly complicated, both in construction and at end-user level, featuring an array of poorly thought- out, unfriendly, unnatural and unintuitive controls, headlined by the ergonomic nightmare that is the joystick used to access layers upon layers of menus and submenus in what should be a touch-screen but actually isn’t. Then of course there is the facelift itself that culminated in a deeply unpleasant countenance reminiscent of The Predator from Schwarzenegger’s films. Given the amount of wherewithal necessary to avail oneself of the latest LX570, there is no rational explanation for why anybody would want one besides acquiring the inalienable right to say “I drive a Lexus”. So no, despite the add-ons, the LX570 is not a better car than the Cruiser; and in the same breath, because of the add-ons, the LX570 is not a better car than the Cruiser.

4. Toyota’s current pricing model for its SUVs will only make me hurl epithets, so the less said, the better.

A brand new Prado costs the same as a brand new Range Rover Sport? Gerrarahia!

Dear Baraza,
I hope this email finds you well.
Please click on the link https://www.facebook.com/kingzne/videos/680631458810583/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED to see why we should all agree that the Prado cannot be defended in any motoring column.
Bob

Dear Bob,
I hope this response finds you well.

Please click on the same link* to see why I sometimes take people to pieces for being obstinate, wilfully ignorant and being both supportive and defensive of mediocrity and ineptitude.

The driver of that Prado did not know what he was doing – at all. It is his fault he lost his vehicle, and to be honest, anybody who watches that video and thinks the Prado is at fault deserves to lose his vehicle as well.

Off-road driving is a technical activity. The fellow in the video has no grasp of it whatsoever. And he has no grasp of basic physics either, which is why he attacks the hill at an awkward angle, beaches his vehicle, tries to reverse in the wrong direction and is forced to abandon ship when Newton’s Laws of Motion remind him that Mother Nature does not suffer fools gladly. His car then descends the slope end over end, writing itself off in the process. The more people like you defend him, the stronger the schadenfreude felt by more sensible drivers who watch that footage. I hope his insurance company throws him under the bus and refuses to compensate this case of severe talentlessness.

What you have asked me to watch is a perfect example of a fool and his vehicle being soon parted, like they so rightly deserve.

(*The link provided leads to video footage widely circulated on social media platforms depicting a silver Toyota Landcruiser Prado J150 failing to make it up a slope and subsequently barrel-rolling downhill as a result of idiocy on the driver’s part and no fault of the car’s. This particular link has been shared by a controversial Kenyan socialite who I can confidently confirm is not a motoring expert, and I would, therefore, strongly advise my readers to eschew any automotive “nuggets” she might have to offer in future because, based on this alone, we can safely conclude she is deliberately misleading her lightly educated followers with the motive of attaining notoriety and social mileage in the form of “likes” and “shares/forwards/retweets”).

Comparison between Landcruiser and Range Rover, both V8, in brief

Performance: The Range Rover is faster because it is more powerful and more compact. Besides, its design gives it better dynamics in terms of handling and braking.

Power: The Range Rover does better, given the performance above.

Off-road capabilities: The Range Rover is compact and easier to manage while the Landcruiser has become too big, too heavy and too clumsy to get out of its own way and the body kits that festoon them nowadays are not really necessary.

Pricing: Broadly similar as they both cost more than Sh22 million brand new.

The better car: Largely due to higher uptime and tamer running costs.

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