Lexus has manifested their desire to be “more edgy” way too literally and turned the LX into the spawn of Predator and a blender. Remember when they just made Camrys with nice interiors? That’s kind of the vibe on the JDM 2016 Toyota Land Cruiser facelift and it looks great.
Aaand I can just about hear Toyota’s marketing crew groan all the way from my house.
They’re hustling so hard to sell #youth with F-Sports and paddle shifters and bumpers sharp enough to dismember pedestrians, and here I am hating on it from my coffee-stained keyboard.
But I don’t think I’m alone in this assessment; the “spindle” face works on their coupes, and I can get into it on their sedans. But it’s just too much extreme for a bumper as big as the LX’s.
If this is What The Kids Want These Days, go ahead and book my room at the retirement home.
Meanwhile, the 200-Series Land Cruiser on which the current Lexus LX is based has just been facelifted too. At least, for the Japanese market.
Their truck looks premium without being all Hollywood about it. Exactly what Lexus was when they started turning economy cars into comfortable commuters. Japan’s Land Cruiser is much more reasonable than ours in price, too. They run from about the equivalent of $41,000 to $55,000, though the engine’s significantly smaller and the base truck is not the luxury barge we get.
All new Japanese market Land Cruisers run the 1UR-FE 4.6 V8 with 314 horsepower and 339 lb-ft of torque. Still a decent scoop of grunt, and supposedly solid off-road ability thanks to its architecture and traction control tech.
The restyled Land Cruiser will also be shipping with pre-collision detection, radar cruise control, automatic high beams, and lane departure warnings as standard.
As you can see, those little chrome and LED eyelids are really the only aesthetic updates. The company’s officially calling it a “partial redesign.”
Whether or not Toyota ports this refresh to America’s Land Cruiser remains to be seen, but the SUV itself seems to be sticking around on their lineup for all 200 people who make the $80,000 investment for one every month in this country.
Interestingly, in spite of a significantly lower base price in Japan Toyota has similar monthly sales targets in that country as they do here in the US. The Land Cruiser’s not a mass-market car, but everybody who owns one seems to sign their allegiance in blood. Maybe they should poach somebody from Land Rover’s branding department and start getting some better product placements for these things.
Images via Toyota
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