Toyota has given the up to date LandCruiser 70 a brand new face, a extra trendy inside, and a brand new turbo-diesel engine. It hasn’t, nevertheless, addressed one of many massive complaints from homeowners of the V8 70 Collection.
The whole LC70 vary persists for 2024 with a rear monitor that’s 95mm narrower than the entrance, a quirk launched in 2007 when Toyota widened the entrance monitor to accomodate the 4.5-litre turbo-diesel V8 engine that continues to be in service right now.
Though it’s invested in a brand new four-cylinder engine and automated transmission, Ray Munday, senior supervisor for automobile analysis and regulation in product planning and improvement at Toyota Australia, stated the associated fee concerned in widening the rear axle meant it was off the desk.
“The entrance monitor was widened when the V8 was put in, in 2007,” Mr Munday informed CarExpert.
“That was to permit for that additional width of the [engine]. By way of the entrance, that wanted a brand new axle. If you’ve acquired a wider axle, that places additional stress on different elements of the chassis.
“There’s a variety of improvement required in that, after which the physique must be widened to accomodate it,” he defined.
“With the rear monitor, to widen that, there’s change within the differential, throughout the stresses that go into the chassis, but additionally the physique. Since you’ve acquired a number of physique kinds – a tray, versus a wagon, versus a troopie – they’ve a special rear physique space.
“You’ve acquired a variety of change factors from each chassis and axle, and physique. We perceive there are prospects requesting that change however the stage of funding could be very excessive for that, and there’s a stage of re-validation required.
“Then after all you’re altering elements that imply you don’t have as a lot carryover. By way of this program right here, the important thing objective was to get the brand new drivetrain in, and the be sure that drivetrain is completely match for objective.”
Though the manufacturing facility gained’t promote you a LandCruiser 70 with equal-width axles, the aftermarket is stuffed with firms that can widen the rear monitor for you.
Accepted by executives in 2019, the four-pot LC70 automated comes on the again of “robust demand” from prospects “as a result of it makes the automobile a lot simpler to deal with for circumstances similar to towing trailers by means of sandy deserts”.