Toyota LandCruiser Sahara

Choosing a good towing vehicle should be 90 per cent common sense and 10 per cent emotion — c’mon, we all like to drive a vehicle that looks good. And “common sense” is a wonderful sweeping term that encapsulates value for money, ride comfort, engine performance, fuel economy, interior practicality, manoeuvrability… Everything we consider before handing over thousands of hard-earned dollars in exchange for a moving hulk of metal and glass.

To us, a good tow vehicle has a strong, torquey engine and a smooth automatic transmission. Manuals are still good, but you simply can’t beat the latest generation of five- and six-speed automatics. Our ideal tow vehicle should be easy to manoeuvre, and have a robust, reliable braking system. Helps in tricky situations if there’s all-wheel drive traction to rely on, and a high driving position helps when backing down boat ramps or up driveways.
Not long ago, you couldn’t find all those characteristics in one vehicle. Today’s buyers are spoilt for choice.

For our money, there’s little to rival Toyota’s LandCruiser as the best off-the-shelf tow vehicle. And with Toyota’s 2006 model now on the streets, it’s the perfect opportunity for us to get reacquainted with an old friend.

It’s almost as if Toyota has tailored the 2006 model year changes specifically for the towing fraternity; adding variable ratio steering, active height control, active damping, fast-illuminating LED tail lights, UV-cutting privacy glass on side windows, and some minor changes.

The bad news is that all these goodies are only available on the Sahara, which sits atop the LandCruiser range with a price tag of $83,800 (petrol V8) or $94,200 (turbodiesel six). The technical advances will flow down to more affordable models in the next few years.
Our LandCruiser test vehicle came with Toyota’s trusty 4.2lt inline six-cylinder turbodiesel engine. Its cast iron head and single camshaft configuration is starting to look a little tired next to newer all-alloy engines and double-cam units, but 151kW of power and 530Nm of torque put it at the pointy end of the turbo-diesel performance pecking order. This one’s no slacker.

Engines do diddly squat without a well-mannered transmission, and LandCruiser’s new five-speed automatic is one of the best. Some may favour the direct through-put of a manual transmission, but quite frankly, diesels work better with autos and torque convertors, which provide strong, seamless acceleration off the mark.

Now, those other goodies we mentioned earlier. Variable Gear-Ratio Steering employs a quicker, more responsive steering gear ratio at low speeds to vastly improve LandCruiser’s manoeuvrability. Most steering systems are tuned to offer maximum stability at highway speeds, which ultimately makes them slow and cumbersome at low speeds. This system effectively offers two distinct steering ratios, one for high speed and another for low speed driving. That’s a simplification, and there’s no dramatic switchover point at, say 60km/h, because the system uses an ECU to choose the perfect ratio for each situation from its operational range.

Active Height Control (AHC) and Toyota Electronically Modulated Suspension (TEMS) allow the driver to tweak ride height and damper settings on the fly to maximise the LandCruiser’s stability and minimise body roll. In addition, AHC is designed to level the Cruiser front to rear when it’s towing or carrying a heavy load in the back.

After a long and luxurious two weeks in a LandCruiser, we’re convinced. The best just got a whole lot better, and the rest have now got an even bigger task catching up. Which can only mean one thing: good times and great vehicles ahead for the towing fraternity.

» Click here for CarPoint's 7 day test review on the Toyota LandCruiser Sahara

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