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Toyota's Cruiser 70 SW tested

Toyota’s Land Cruiser 70 has been on sale locally since 2007, and globally since 1985, which highlights a little discrepancy.

What this means, quite succinctly, is you’re paying 2009 inflation-cursed Rands (the ones with animals rather than Jan van Riebeeck on them) for mid 1980s, Cold War-era technology.

It would appear the Cruiser 70 is, even for the most ardent off-road aficionados or Toyota acolytes, about as justifiable as dolphin steaks.

Fortunately I’ve eaten dolphin steak (it tastes like calamari fillet) and feel I am subsequently in a position to tell you if, after having a Cruiser 70 on test, it is in any way a justifiable purchase.

What is it?

Cruiser 70 is a terrain interrogating vehicle designed for severe abuse, featuring a very low mechanical complexity threshold.

In more colloquial terms, it’s vintage Spanner Valley technology designed to outlast the Kalahari farmer who buys it. This, many would argue, is the key difference between a 70 and the world’s most iconic (or is it ironic?) off-roader, Land Rover’s Defender.

South African’s complained to Toyota for years about Cruiser 70’s local absence, especially as the 100- and 200-Series Cruisers went S-Class baiting with leathery interiors and independent suspension.

When Cruiser 70 finally arrived, the moaning morphed to specification issues – primarily the absence of a turbodiesel engine as our Australian friends are privileged to have…

What local overlanders have ended up with is an all-wheel drive (not permanent 4x4), live-axle (with differential locks each end), station wagon featuring a Cressida interior.

Sounds rather uncomfortable, ungainly and quite silly doesn’t it? For the most part it is.

Curiously then, why do we like it?


For a day out in the Karoo with friends you want something reliable. Cruiser 70 fits the billing perfectly. Without a centre diff transfer case can be obstinate to engage and disengage though...

A box to put stuff into

Land Cruiser's 70 series wagon, especially our test unit finished in regulation circa 1980s Bronze, is not an ode to AutoCAD design. The boxy profile and angular lines appear as if they happened from a military surplus vehicle depot.

Huge windows contrast oddly with the 16-inch alloy wheels, which look preciously undersized in those huge, slab contoured wheelarches. If you're wondering why these aren't steel, ask Toyota, especially considering 70’s pretence to be a forbidding, Livingstonian overlander.

It also has a rather soft front styling treatment, which appears comical even with that whopping chrome grille.

As a little boy in Namibia, I practically had a 60-Series Cruiser as a minder. Yet despite the personal affinity I have for Cruisers, I’ll admit a Defender’s proportions and detailing realise a more authentic, better looking overlander.


Industrial quality plastic, vinyl and cloth texture the cabin. Instrumentation is tri-dial simple (speedo, fuel and temperature gauge). There are electric windows though, and proper, African specification sunshades - which work when driving at a right angle to a setting or rising sun.

Stepping up and into the Cruiser is certainly mind warping stuff.

The interior is straight from Toyota’s 1980s parts bin. Switchgear, instrumentation, hard-wearing angular plastics and steel wool texture carpeting, indicate Cruiser 70 is a world away from contemporary SUVs.

You get air-conditioning, power steering, a standard radio/CD-player and... Well, not much else. Ergonomics are quite passable by default, simply because of the lack of features and amenities available to locate and operate. 

Despite the anarchic interior design architecture, Cruiser 70 does have a tidy driving position, with those huge windows and the elevated seating position rendering an excellent all-round field of view.

Considering the 70’s tall stance, you would expect loadability to be excellent, enabling everything from the DSTV to your favourite bar stool to be accommodated for a five-week Botswana bush trip.

Able to carry 820kg inside, Cruiser 70’s loadability bests most low-range enabled SUVs, yet is shy of Defender’s 1t and 9kg of biltong-ferrying prowess. 

Getting bulky kit in and out of the Cruiser is achieved via a vertically split tailgate – which is something of an oddity these days.

Some people love them (easier to angle in a 2m wooden giraffe curio, allegedly), yet I prefer a horizontal split, with the top half providing shade, and the lower tailgate section setting about a neat viewing seat.

A box to go everywhere in

So it looks like box, has ergonomics straight from the mid 1980s (in contrast to the Defender’s 1950s vintage cabin architecture) and now you’re thinking, "Damn, it must be agonising to drive too!" No, not really – just slow, primarily.

Powered by Toyota’s ancient all iron, 4.2l naturally aspirated in-line six diesel engine, Cruiser 70 is not quite as lazy as one would expect, even with only 96kW available to move around more than 2t of wagon.


Updated in the early 1990s, Cruiser 70's 1HZ is not a frugal, punchy, contemporary diesel. Within the cast iron block and heads six-cylinders run at a 22.4:1 compression ratio though - engine braking is otherworldly.

In an urban environment, If you short-shift it, there is 285Nm of rotational force at 2 200r/min, and the 4.2l engine has such an unbelievable tolerance for abuse, keeping up with traffic is within the gambit of its abilities – if you cane it.

With the Cruiser ambling along quite happily at 130km/h with very little in reserve, the N1’s right-hand lane is not natural territory for a 70.

All things considered it’s not a 2t sloth. Considering its good visibly and an uncharacteristically sane (compared to Defender) driving position, Cruiser 70 is tolerable around town.

Towing capacity, at only 1.5t, is positively shameful compared to Defender's 3.5t - not that we know why you'd want to tow a 3.5t trailer off-road. If you are a boat guy though, Defender is the slipway winner between these two.

The ride is horrendous though, and so it should be. Suspended by live axles front and rear, the fore wheels benefit from coil springs whilst aft you’re back in the 1800s with a leafspring set-up. It’s very clear then - Cruiser 70 only comes into play when the asphalt and roadside kerbing gives way to dirt road surfacing and dongas.

Off-road the tale of tape is decided measured against it.

At 230mm 70’s ground clearance is pitiful compared to a Defender (314mm), and the approach and departure angles, at 38- and 25-degrees respectively, are unnervingly outgunned by Defender’s 49-degree angle of attack and 35-degree follow through capability.

Why then, is it so capable off-road? In a word – traction.


Your sports team let you down again? Wife invited her book club over on a Saturday afternoon? Kids going completely emo on you? If you have a set of Cruiser 70 keys disappearing up a mountain (literally) for some serenity is always an option.

Despite severe terrain folding neat dents in those running boards and shearing off bits of the rear bumper, Cruiser 70 never runs short out of traction – even when lifting a wheel or two off the ground.

It will get through or over practically any obstacle – how much cosmetic damage you’ll end up with though, is another matter altogether.

Despite only having part-time four-wheel drive (the front hubs lock automatically when you engage the transfer case), both axles feature electronically actuated differential locks. When this duo is locked up, as a farming friend of mine put it, this Cruiser 70 goes, "Where dassies with hiking boots (really small hiking boots) can only dream of."

Off-road, the low-range gear ratios and benign throttle response from the 4.2l engine make for a very easy to drive combination.

As soon as you spot some potential cross-axle bother up ahead, adjust your line, lock up the diffs, and cruise through.


Cruiser 70 loves doing this all day. Lockers engaged, second gear, low-range - no worries. Plot the reference vehicles in the background - it's as steep as it looks...

In comparison with some modern, electronically controlled individual wheel traction systems, front and rear mechanical lockers come off as slightly agricultural, but they work, though.

With the diffs locked up, steering response is as true as the logic underpinning a Ponzi share scheme, and they can be a chore to engage and disengage at times. At worst they leave you maddeningly flicking the selector switch and riding the clutch much to the bemusement of a wagon full of passengers.

Cruiser 70’s pièce de résistance though, is displayed in the novice off-roader’s two most nightmarish scenarios: long descents and aborted ascents.

The 4.2l naturally aspirated diesel’s fearsome compression ratio and sheer size ensure peerless compression braking on long, treacherous descents. Set a neat line, first gear, low range, feet on the floormat, and let 70 find its own way down. Safe as houses.

Same thing when climbing and discovering you’ve taken a horrible line and run out of options.

Stall it, execute a hill-start and it runs back down in reverse with the aplomb of a saintly Sherpa. No clever algorithmic traction control or ABS addled hill-decent control, just vintage Land Cruiser simplicity.



Weaknesses?

Well the doubters would like to tell you it’s too underpowered to drive in sand.

Then I’ll tell you I got so bored operating it as a sweeper vehicle on the forbidding Klipbokkop sand trail, which poses a keen test of sand driving dynamics, a friend's girlfriend was roped in to complete the route as I listened to some rugby on the radio and admired the scenery instead.

I did manage to get it stuck once, in the most tyre sensitive of off-road obstacles – mud.

So yes, if you are going to be driving through (instead of around) forbidding mud and clay, the standard tyres aren’t great.

Those rear leaf springs can retard progress a bit compared to coils when you’re slogging through deep mud too, though the bush mechanic-friendly simplicity of their design weighs the argument back in favour again.


Mud. The great leveller. Standard Conti tyres not the best for this sort of thing, neither are the rear leaf springs which add a modicum of drag when you least need it in near axle level mud.

Design

In a word – unbreakable.  Makes a comical amount of sense in African (local) conditions. Engine eschews direct injection, and will probably compress and ignite 10 000PPM diesel if it had too. Despite this you'll have to self service those oil-filters at 5 000km on Safari, and general services are each 10 000km, which is curious when most common-rail diesels run 15 000km (or more) intervals...

Interior

Ergonomics are shameful, yet shame a Defender all the same. No airbags and those angular lines hardly look like they are going to be stellar energy absorbing surfaces in a crash, but it has a neat hand throttle though, which your bother in law’s X5 doesn’t…

Driving

It is quieter and more refined than a Defender on tar, yet these things are relative. As capable as the Landy off-road (with fully lockable axle traction), yet smaller approach and departure angles mean bodywork takes a beating.

Verdict

It might not be permanent four-wheel drive, yet Cruiser 70 remains the ultimate showroom purchasable African Safari vehicle

The design is positively Jurassic, yet the radio/CD combination doesn’t skip interminably and the air-conditioning is tidily capable. Dust sealing is ace, build quality old-school Toyota and the mechanics government official proof – and that’s tough, let me tell you.

It might have taken awfully long to finally come to market locally, but it’s phenomenally at home working in the African bush, or desert, or along shale strewn mountain ridges… Essentially everywhere you should not go, but will drag your family for a vacation anyway.

Land Cruiser 70. Buy one and you’ll never need another.

Price

R421 700

Pluses

Solid axles, dual lockers

Unbreakable feel

Electro mechanical simplicity

Diesel engine’s compression characteristics

Minuses

Engaging and disengaging 4x4 without a centre diff

Weak departure angle punishes rear bodywork

Service intervals

Cold War era ergonomics

Towing capability




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