Ras Al Khaimah Police rescued an Emirati driver, whose Land Cruiser’s cruise control system got stuck at 120 kph on Emirates Road, which wouldn’t allow the car to decelerate or even stop.
Remember that story that was circulating some time ago, about the driver of a current-generation Toyota Land Cruiser in Saudi Arabia who set his cruise control, and then the car supposedly kept accelerating by itself, setting off a series of events that ended up in the police escorting him at high speeds and eventually shooting out his rear window to shut down the car by triggering the immobiliser? Remember how stupidly fake it all sounded? That’s because it was fake.
The Toyota Land Cruiser, quite possibly the most overrated vehicle in the world, or so most of us would like to think. So many of them ply the roads in the Middle East, tailgating everyone else, that most people have a love-hate perspective on them. We did drive the Land Cruiser before, but never really pushed it too hard off-road, because we weren’t experienced enough back then. But then, come 2012, there is an updated version with a new 4.6-litre engine option. This time, we were ready to take it off-road. Properly.
It isn’t every day that a new Toyota Land Cruiser comes out. It still isn’t that day. The last time a new one debuted was in late 2007. Before that, it happened in around 1998, if what our grandpa says is true. Today, we took a look at the 2012 model, a facelifted version of the existing model, at an event in Dubai.
The updated 2012 Toyota Land Cruiser is now available in the UAE. Changes are minor, but they include a new front end, some new off-road features, two new engines and a some changes in trim levels.
The 2012 Toyota Land Cruiser was released in Japan this month, although it isn’t much different from the current version.
Al Futtaim Motors, in collaboration with Arctic Trucks, officially introduced the expanded Xtreme product range during the recent 2011 Dubai Motor Show. Alongside the 2012 Land Cruiser Xtreme, there are now the FJ Cruiser Xtreme and the Hilux Xtreme.
The 2012 Toyota Land Cruiser will receive a minor facelift. Japanese brochure images of the facelifted 4×4 have been floating around for a while now.
This drive was a long time coming. The “Xtreme” package for the Toyota Land Cruiser has been around since late 2008, with any of the LC trims and engines. Modified by an Icelandic firm called Arctic Trucks at their Dubai-based workshop with a full UAE dealer warranty, the Xtreme makes a Land Cruiser look hopped up on steroids, and is now available for the “new” 5.7-litre V8 model that debuted in the GCC recently.
This may be old news, but it is worth pointing out that the long-running Toyota Land Cruiser Pickup, globally known as the LC75, has been given a new V6 engine for 2010, ditching the old inline-6 that has been a long-standing favourite of ghetto tuners in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Now codenamed the LC79, this is the latest attempt to domesticate the aging original Land Cruiser Pickup, after a frontal facelift in 2008 flattened the original flared-fender design that dated back to the 1960s.