Land Cruiser Wins Petersen's 4Wheel and Off-Road 2008 4X4 of the Year Award

This year, the test for Petersen's 4Wheel & Off-Road 4x4 of the Year award took two weeks, 800 miles and seven judges. After maneuvering through rigorous trails and climbing loose, rocky hills, the 2008 Land Cruiser was victorious. Read the full story to see how the Land Cruiser beat the competition.

WINNER
The ’08 Land Cruiser has evolved a long way from the rugged FJ-40s of years gone by. Gone are the removable hardtop, solid axles, manual transmissions, and burly leaf-spring suspensions. In their place are the leather-lined interior, independent and coil-sprung suspension, monster V-8 power, computer-controlled transmissions, and technologically advanced traction control systems that process what every wheel is doing while on or off road and calculates a method to keep the vehicle moving in a safe, efficient way. At first glance, the Land Cruiser doesn’t reveal its offroad ability. It’s missing the big aggressive tires of the Hummers and Wrangler, and while it has skidplates, it lacks the ground clearance that some competitors have. But don’t let the looks fool you (or should we say bore you), because the Toyota quietly carries a big stick. That stick comes in the form of 401 lb-ft of torque under the hood from its 5.7L V-8. And more often than not, big power under the hood can allow judges to not only have fun in the high-speed, hillclimb, and sand sections, but also propel a 3-ton pig of an SUV through rocky trails and silty dirt washes. And then there is the traction control. We loved it and we hated it, and we hated that we sometimes loved it. The Crawl mode, where you can choose different rates of forward motion while in low range, allows you to let your foot off the gas and the rig will claw its way forward, requiring just steering advice from the driver seat. If traction ceases, the brakes activate to eliminate wheelspin, and if flexibility is needed, sway bars are released to let tires droop at will. We have long been distrustful of any of these performance nannies, but we loved that we could turn it all off if desired, and yet when left on we hated to admit that it actually worked better than we wanted it to. Damn the machine that can work so good that drivers are almost unneeded, but kudos to the engineers that actually figured out how to make it work, and work well. This declaration of the ’08 Toyota Land Cruiser as our 2008 4x4 of the Year will no doubt bring cries of contempt from some readers. We didn’t expect it to win so handily, but consider that other than the Jeep, the Land Cruiser has more history in the dirt than the rest of the field has. Though many anticipated one of the American 4x4s (Hummer/Jeep) to win, the Cruiser finally had a trait the others lacked and which American four-wheelers have long cherished—seriously fun V-8 power.

Toyota Land Cruiser
Heritage and Technology Earn
Land Cruiser the Title

The Toyota Land Cruiser was one of the first vehicles Toyota brought to the United States 50 years ago and has always been the Japanese carmaker’s preeminent off-road vehicle. The 2008 model (referred to as the URJ200 or 200-Series by Cruiser-heads) has pushed electronic technology in an off-road vehicle to the nthdegree with the off-road Crawl mode that uses a mixture of brake-biasing traction control and forced sway-bar articulation, resulting in a low-speed cruiser control. Not since the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Land Rover LR3, or Volkswagen Touareg have we seen such an amazing use of computer controls for maximum off-road performance, but this makes us wonder if a vehicle that works great off road but barely requires any driver input is a better vehicle than one that has gears and lockers but still needs a driver with some skill. Toyota, please stand to hear your offenses. First of all, this is your premier off-road vehicle, so how about a return of the selectable lockers? You offered them 10 years ago, so why not now? Yes, your off-road traction control is impressive and the Crawl mode is unique, but we wonder how all those gizmos will work after being buried in the thick mud of the Amazon or after 80,000 miles in an African desert. We know most U.S. buyers won’t spend $70,000 for an SUV to be driven into the mud and muck of the woods on purpose, but some of them will. For them, how about a mode where the driver decides which axle is locked up? Also the styling is a little boring. The lines your luxury ute in with all the soccer mom mobiles on the market. The Land Cruiser we tested came with decent underbelly skidplates and awesome steel tubular rock sliders (we were told these would be optional), a powerful 5.7L V-8 (same engine as the Tundra), and an awesome center- console fridge that actually kept beverages cold while out in the desert. Though the Land Cruiser could have used a bit more ground clearance, and we would kill for the solid-front-axle diesel version they offer in the Middle East, it was still frighteningly capable. We even had testers who engaged one of the multiple crawl modes and, with both feet planted on the carpeted floor were able to cruise up the loose rocky hillclimb that left other 4x4s scrambling and destroying tires. Did this technology take it to the top of the test or did the judges revolt, demanding that they still get to drive? Check the winner’s page.