Toyota seemingly has a fix for the wayward stability control on the Lexus GX 460 and Toyota Prado VX that prompted a premature recall last week, as shown in this released video. It should simply involve uploading the reprogrammed Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) code onto every customer car soon, although anyone still expecting to drift their truck can likely turn off the VSC manually.
After being blamed for not reacting quickly enough to safety concerns over sticky pedals, it seems now Toyota is going overboard with regards to new concerns over the Lexus GX 460’s stability control, temporarily suspending sales worldwide, even in the UAE. Now the 2010 Toyota Prado VX and VX-L sister-model sales have also been suspended.
The U.S. market gets an extensive line of Toyota 4×4 models, including the 4Runner and Highlander to fill up the midsize segment. That left no room for the Prado, which is what the rest of the world gets. However, Toyota has been selling a slightly-altered version of the Prado in the United States, calling it the Lexus GX470. That model has now been replaced by a new 2010 GX460 model, based on the all-new 2010 Prado.
As far as we know, we are the first people to review the 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado in the desert. Everyone else drove it “off-road” at the launch event, to which we were not invited, but that was a carefully-planned event with easy gravel jaunts anyway. We took our Prado VX-L tester on the same dunes used by desert safari outfits in Dubai.
The 2010 Toyota “Land Cruiser” Prado is currently the most researched vehicle in the region. We got one for two days, and being the only one we’ve seen on the road so far, we would’ve thought that we’d be swarmed by middle-aged family men on the streets of Dubai, inquiring about this dream car. But we weren’t. We got a few people standing around staring at it here and there, but they were probably the intelligent ones. Because if you don’t concentrate hard enough, it is easy to dismiss it as the old model.
While the 2010 Toyota Prado has officially been launched in Europe and Australia, the UAE and other GCC countries will have to wait for a month or two for its local debut. Meanwhile, the new 3-door version of the Prado has surfaced in some promotional Toyota footage.
The 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado officially debuted in the United Kingdom, even while shipments of the new model are sitting on GCC ports as local dealers wait for stocks of the old model to be cleared.
To add to our excessive coverage of the most insignificant new 4×4 model that also happens to be the most anticipated in the GCC region, the Japanese brochure for the 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado has been leaked onto the net.
As pointed out by Akif, one of our readers, a real photo of the 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado has been leaked onto the internet. The photo appears to be real, and has “internal use only” marked across it.
The current Toyota Land Cruiser Prado has been around for the better part of this decade now. Even though it still looks good, it is estimated that a new model should debut for the 2010 model year.