Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Land Cruiser comes with folders full of maintenance records. The truck has amassed those along with nearly 300K on the clock. Let’s see if those big numbers fully add up to this J80’s asking price.
What better way is there to enjoy the arrival of spring weather than rolling-up the garage door and doing some wrenching on that project car? What’s that? You don’t have a project car? Well, we’ve got you, fam.
Yesterday’s 1965 Ford Falcon was just such a project—a clean-titled garage find that will require some work before it can rejoin the road-going community. That work didn’t look all that onerous, and the Falcon being simple enough that you could use Fisher-Price tools on it made it all the more appealing. That made its $2,000 asking price feel like a deal and in the end then Falcon flew off with a 70 percent Nice Price win.
Do you remember that Jeep we looked at on Monday? It had its issues, but one thing that really stands out about that SRT-8 edition of the Grand Cherokee is its snub of the traditional Jeep virtue of ultimate off-road-ability.
Should you need something that—in Tolkien parlance—will get you there and back again, you might want a truck that’s more like this 1996 Toyota Land Cruiser. Hell, you might want this Toyota even if your biggest worry is a light drizzle and some potholes on the way to the COVID test drive-thru.
As evidenced by its odometer, driving this truck seems to be a popular pastime. That’s because between its claimed two owners it has racked up an impressive 293,400 miles. This being a Toyota of a certain age, those miles don’t really show either.
Oh sure, there is some evidence of the distance traveled and calendar pages flipped into irrelevance. The seller says that the hood suffers some dents—from foul balls at baseball games no less. There’s also a bent radio antenna and some brake dust etching on the alloy wheels that could be addressed.
Other than that, the cream white paint looks to be in solid shape and there’s only minor oxidization at the joints and under the hood.
That hood also covers the 1FZ 4.5-litre straight-six and related accessories. The big six offers 212 horsepower and is backed up by the standard four-speed automatic gearbox and full-time AWD.
The ad says that the truck has seen proper maintenance over the course of its life, and in fact, comes with the aforementioned stack of paperwork apparently documenting it all. Most recently, it has seen brake components, front suspension bits, the A/C compressor, and window motors replaced.
Still on the to-do list: recovering the leather front seats due to some splitting and that knackered radio antenna.
The rest of the interior looks to be a fine place to add to the truck’s already substantial miles. The only major aesthetic issues in here, aside from the seats, are the center armrest and steering wheel cover, both of which have seen better days. I also take issue with people who hang their air-freshener tree from a steering column stalk rather than the rear-view mirror. Who do you think you’re fooling?
These trucks are big, heavy, and somewhat lugubrious when you need to do anything other than just go straight. They also tend to get really poor fuel economy, although with gas being pretty much given away at the moment maybe it’s the thirsty vehicles’ time to shine?
With most cars, having so many miles would be a red flag. Even with the stack of maintenance records balancing them out, that’s a lot of use that you’ll never get back. Let me reiterate—that’s most cars.
This isn’t most cars, it’s a J80 Land Cruiser, and these seemingly never say die. Sure, this one has a few minor issues here and there, but the seller describes it as a solid rocker and it does look pretty nice for having gone all those miles. How much might that be worth?
The asking is $7,200 and that, of course, is pandemic pricing. Expect to spend a little extra to sanitize the truck before you let the family cruise around in it.
What do you think, is this Land Cruiser worth that $7,200 asking despite the miles? Or, do those add up to a much lower value?
You decide!
Washington DC Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to S.R. Gooch for the hookup!
Help me out with NPOCP. Hit me up at rob@jalopnik.com and send me a fixed-price tip. Remember to include your Kinja handle.