The Undercover 300 Down Under

The 300 series Land Cruiser is just months away from hitting Toyota showrooms, but we were lucky enough to score a day behind the wheel of a prototype, months before any saw the unmasked production cars

- Matt Raudonikis

It would be a rare privilege for anyone to be among the first people outside of the manufacturer’s company to drive an all-new vehicle. But that’s just what a select group of Australian motoring journalists were when they gathered at the Australian Automotive Research Centre (AARC), near Anglesea in Victoria on a cold, wet day back in May.

Such is the importance of the Australian market to Japanese auto giant Toyota when it comes to its four-wheel-drive vehicles, that this small group of press were the first non-Toyota employees to drive one of its LandCruiser 300 Series prototypes. Rarefied ground indeed.

Toyota Australia engineers had been working on the 300 Series program for more than seven years up to this date, because back in Japan, they see Australia as the ‘Home of Land Cruiser’ and the local terrain as the perfect ground for testing.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

BEFORE a spanner was turned to build a prototype, or a sketch drawn of what a new LandCruiser might look like, Toyota looked hard at what the new car needed to be. For this they went back to the customer and spoke to many existing LandCruiser owners in all parts of Australia to see why they owned a LandCruiser, how they used it, and what they might want from a new one.

“It’s all about the customer. What they do with it and where they drive it,” said TMCA Chief of Evaluation and testing, Ray Munday, as we gathered in a secretive shed that Toyota leases full-time at AARC.

What came from this research was that Australian LandCruiser owners wanted a diesel engine and they bought a Cruiser for its durability and comfort when driving over long distances.