Unfortunately you can't buy a HZJ76 Land Cruiser in America, but you can in other parts of the world like Africa and the Middle East—where this 2011 model came from. As you can see from the pictures this truck's journey to America wasn't without incident.
The answer to the first and most obvious question—"How did a brand new truck end up mangled and without a top"— is actually an easy one. After the truck made it to American shores a negligent transport truck driver hit a low bridge with the roof of the Land Cruiser.
Although the truck that wouldn't ever be road legal in America the truck had a life of off road trail duty ahead of it before the incident with the bridge. After the accident it ended up in the hands of a Baltimore shipping company, who currently has the truck listed on Ebay. We don't know if this is the same shipping company responsible for the accident, but we do know they were the ones who cut off the remains of the roof.
Looking past the significant damage and the question of road legality, this HZJ76 Land Cruiser is one cool rig. It has a HZ1 inline 6 diesel motor with the optional turbo charger, a 5 speed manual transmission, straight axles front and back, 4x4 and a PTO. This information brings up another obvious question—Why can't we get trucks this badass in America?
The next logical question would be what you can do with a twisted Land Cruiser that can't be driven on the street. It would be an awesome donor vehicle for a complete update of an older Land Cruiser or with a cage and body repair could be a one of a kind fair weather off road trail rig. From the looks of the bidding, it appears someone has already figured out exactly what to do with it—and they want it bad.
Bidding has already met reserve and climbed to a stifling $25,000 with a little less than two days left. Sure these are super rare in the US and pretty damn cool, but this example is also pretty mangled. We can only watch to see where the bidding for this truck ends and wonder what plans its new owner has in mind.
[Ebay via Bring a Trailer]