LC300 BREAKS COVER

ALL-NEW TOYOTA LANDCRUISER 300 SERIES MAKES GLOBAL DEBUT

- MATT RAUDONIKIS

After all the leaked spy photos and years of delays, Toyota has officially pulled the wraps off its new LandCruiser 300 Series four-wheel-drive wagon.

As you can see, the leaked photos left nothing to the imagination and clearly showed what the all-new vehicle would look like. What they couldn’t show you though was the engine, which was speculated on just as much as photos were leaked. The official word is that the LC300 will be powered exclusively by a new F33AFTV 3.3-litre V6 diesel engine using a pair of turbochargers to boost its outputs to 227kW and 700Nm.

Those figures are up 27kW and 50Nm respectively on the 1VD-FTE V8 that powered the current 200 Series LandCruiser, but will the numbers alone be enough to convince the V8-loving Cruiser owners that the new V6 is a better engine? Only time behind the wheel will tell.

While a turbocharged 305kW-650Nm 3.5L V6 petrol engine has been mentioned for non-Australian markets to replace the petrol V8, there’s no mention of it arriving here, and why would they bother. When Toyota offered the choice of a petrol engine in the LC200 it accounted for less than two per cent of total sales. The petrol V6 is expected to gain some form of EV hybridisation some time in the future, and that could pose a more interesting proposition for Australian buyers concerned about fuel use.