New Toyota Land Cruiser review

Do you need an SUV that can cross a mountain range or a desert? If so, the Toyota Land Cruiser will almost certainly end up on your shortlist.

For more than 70 years, the Land Cruiser has built a reputation for itself as an unstoppable off-roader, often found providing transport in the most challenging environments in the world.

This new fifth-generation Land Cruiser aims to carry on that tradition, but with the promise of more focus on its on-road comfort and refinement. While previous Land Cruisers have been untouchable off the beaten track, they’ve felt pretty agricultural and uncomfortable on a school run compared to the best SUVs for the same money.

This new model – which is a seven-seater as standard – faces competition from the similarly off-road-focused Ineos Grenadier as well as the Land Rover Defender, which is tough off-road but still luxurious on it.

Other markets will get the option of a bigger Toyota Land Cruiser 300 with a broad choice of engines, but in the UK we only get this Land Cruiser 250 with one diesel engine, lots of off-road tech and some big expectations. Is it just an off-road workhorse or can it mix it with the best all-round SUVs? Read on to find out...

The Toyota Land Cruiser's 2.8-litre, four-cylinder diesel engine – which it shares with the Toyota Hilux – produces 201bhp and 369lb ft of torque.

It's actually the same engine as the previous-generation Land Cruiser, but has a smaller turbocharger and an eight-speed automatic gearbox. The gear shifts are fine on the move, but even with some basic modifications the engine sounds pretty gruff and grumbly, and doesn’t feel quick out on the open road.

In fact, the new Land Cruiser's official 0-62mph time of 10.9 seconds means it’s half a second slower than its (less heavy) predecessor. Arguably more importantly for this car, the engine has plenty of grunt to haul a fully loaded car up a mountain, and it can tow up to 3,500kg.

It’s just a shame there isn’t a more characterful and impressive six-cylinder option, as can be found in the rival Land Rover Defender. The six-cylinder Ineos Grenadier is quicker too. The Land Cruiser can go toe-to-toe with those rivals when it comes to off-road prowess though.

For starters, it retains the previous-generation car’s body-on-frame structure, so the engine and suspension are supported on a frame that’s separate from the rest of the bodywork. For the new car, the chassis is said to be 50% more rigid than that of its predecessor, the entire body-on-frame assembly is 30% stiffer and it now has 11.9m of structural adhesive.

The Ineos Grenadier follows similar lines in its make-up – it’s a more robust and durable set-up than a conventional all-in-one design, and allows more axle articulation, so it’s better suited for off-road ability.

On top of all that, the Land Cruiser has permanent four-wheel drive, a low-range gearbox, a 700mm wading depth, central and rear locking differentials, and you can disconnect the front anti-roll bar to give you even more wheel travel (20% more compared to the previous car).

And this is a terrific machine to tackle the great outdoors in.

You can keep things simple, stick it in one of its drive modes (optimised for snow, mud, sand and other such tricky terrain) and it will happily haul itself through pretty much everything you’d reasonably expect to encounter off the beaten track. But when the going gets really tough, you can take matters into your own hands, engage the diff locks and feel like a cross-country hero. 

The wheels are 20in in the UK, by the way, and come with Dunlop or Yokohama all-terrain tyres. If you want anything more seriously off-road focused, you’ll need to fit it yourself. On our off-road test route, the standard wheels coped with most challenges the Land Cruiser might encounter in the real world.

In a first for the model, the version model gets new electric power steering designed to lessen the effects of rutted tracks (in cars with a hydraulic set-up, the steering wheel can snatch from one side to the other).

There is a downside though: the new Land Cruiser is still fairly agricultural on the road. The ride over bumpy dirt tracks is remarkably forgiving, but even on a flat motorway surface things are quite choppy and unsettled. It’s also very noisy inside and the body lean through fast corners is monumental.

The Land Rover Defender shows that you can be terrifically capable off-road while still offering limo-like luxury on the school run.

“The new Land Cruiser's Crawl Control function is effectively a low-speed cruise control that can slowly and safely get you down a steep incline without you having to touch the brakes or the accelerator. I found it really easy to use.” – Doug Revolta, Head of Video

The previous Toyota Land Cruiser could trace its roots back to 2009, and by the time it went off sale the interior really did seem old. But a big revamp inside for this new model has brought things more up to date.

The driving position is still absolutely fantastic. You feel very high up off the ground and have a terrific view out of the car. The view itself is brilliant (thanks to lots of glass at the front, back and sides – including huge door mirrors) and the Land Cruiser's boxy styling also makes it very easy to judge its size.

An off-road camera provides a clear view under the car and down at the sides to spot unseen obstacles both off and on the road.

You get a fully digital 12.3in driver display, along with a 12.3in touchscreen on the dashboard for the infotainment system. The touchscreen is positioned high up so it’s easy to glance at and reach while driving, but it’s a shame there aren’t more physical controls to operate it. The system itself is responsive, and Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are standard.

You’ll find plenty of big, easy-to-jab buttons around the interior to operate the climate control and various off-road functions. It might seem unnecessary to point out these physical buttons, but given that so many new cars have fiddly and distracting touch-sensitive alternatives, it’s fantastic that Toyota has kept things simple – a deliberate choice given the off-road nature of the car.

The robust feeling of all the materials inside indicates a rough-and-ready focus. There’s a sturdy feeling to everything you touch. But while the plastics and soft-touch materials feel good quality, they don’t feel luxurious. The interior of a Land Rover Defender looks and feels far more expensive, for a similar price.

“While I was off-roading and getting thrown around the interior, I was very grateful for the padding lower down on the Land Cruiser's doors and on the outside of the centre console.” – Doug Revolta, Head of Video

The Toyota Land Cruiser is a wide and tall car, and the space up front is brilliant. Even when you’re getting thrown around over rocky terrain there’s no danger of a collision between the driver and front passenger.

Storage up front isn’t actually that brilliant though. The door bins are a little slim, and while you’ve got two chunky cup holders on the centre console the cooled cubby under the armrest is rather stingy.

In the middle row, space is very good, even for tall adults, with a high sitting position and huge side windows offering a fantastic view out of the car. You can’t slide the seats forwards or backwards but you can adjust the angle of the backrest to lean back and relax.

Getting into the third row of seats is simple thanks to big doors that open wide, and a middle row that is easily tumbled forwards to give you a huge space to slide through to get to the very back.

A couple of adults can sit in the third row, with decent legroom but fairly limited headroom – a seven-seat Land Rover Defender 110 is more generous in the very back.

There’s no adjusting the available leg room in the Land Cruiser's third row, either, because the middle row is fixed in place. The middle row does have an adjustable backrest so you can negotiate with the passenger in front of you to tilt forwards more to free up some knee room.

The boot with all seven seats in place is pretty small, but the third-row seats are easily and neatly folded away into the floor electrically to open up a huge amount of extra boot space, adding up to 566 litres. That is, though, roughly half of the amount of litres on offer in the Ineos Grenadier. A Defender 110 has a bigger boot too.

By the way, while the previous-generation Land Cruiser had a side-hinged tailgate, which was very tricky to open in tight parking spaces, the new one has a much more conventional top-hinge opening. Plus, you open up just the rear glass to reach inside the boot, which is very handy.

You can still have a full-size spare wheel but it’s underslung beneath the car now – you can’t have it mounted on the back of the boot as you could on the old car, or under the boot floor.

“In the third row of the Land Cruiser I could adjust the angle of my backrest electrically – which seems quite luxurious. However, the difference in the sitting position on offer is minuscule, so it’s fairly pointless.” – Doug Revolta, Head of Video

In the UK, the Toyota Land Cruiser comes in just one trim, modestly named Invincible. The long list of standard equipment includes black leather upholstery, dual-zone air conditioning, heated and ventilated seats up front and in the rear, a JBL stereo, a panoramic reversing camera, a digital driver’s display, 20in alloy wheels and a sunroof, and lots of off-road tech.

So it's certainly very well equipped – but it’s also expensive, with a similar price to an Ineos Grenadier. If you don’t actually need the off-road talents of this Land Cruiser, there are all manner of big SUVs that are far superior in terms of comfort and luxury. Plus, the seven-seat version of the Land Rover Defender 110 is fantastic off and on road and available for less money.

There's a but here... the Land Rover model can’t compete with Toyota when it comes to reliability. The Japanese manufacturer has an outstanding record, and finished fifth out of 31 brands in our 2024 What Car? Reliability Survey.

Plus, you can extend the Land Cruiser's standard three-year warranty cover to up to 10 years or 100,000 miles if you get it serviced at an authorised Toyota workshop each year.

“On a big multi-day off-road adventure, I'd be very happy with the standard 80-litre fuel tank. But with an official fuel economy figure of 26.4mpg, I wouldn’t be so happy with what it would cost to fill up the Land Cruiser.” – Doug Revolta, Head of Video

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