2017 Toyota LandCruiser 79 Series offroad review

ROBERT PEPPER’S 2017 TOYOTA LC79 OFFROAD REVIEW WITH PRICING, SPECS, RIDE AND HANDLING, SAFETY, VERDICT AND SCORE. In a nutshell: The LandCruiser remains the toughest and most heavy-duty 4X4 on the market. That's why it is so respected and commands the price it does, despite its age. 2017 Toyota LandCruiser LC79 Dual Cab GXL Pricing $68,990 plus onroad costs Warranty three-years, 100,000 kilometres Safety Unrated (single cab only 5 star rating for 2015) Engine 4.5 litre V8 turbo-diesel Power 151kW at 3400rpm Torque 430Nm at 1200rpm Transmission five-speed manual Drive part-time 4X4, low range, front and rear locking differentials Dimensions 5230mm (L); 1870mm (W); 1955mm (H) Ground clearance 232mm Approach/ramp/departure angles 33 / not available / 27 degrees Wading 700mm Seats five Turning circle 14.4m Tare weight 2175kg GVM 3300kg Fuel Tank 130 litres Thirst 10.7L/100km Fuel diesel Towing 3500kg braked, 350kg TBM, 750kg unbraked GCM 6800kg Spare full-size alloy underslung The LC79 is supplied as a cab chassis with optional tray. Some specifications such as tare weight and length, and the price will depend on options taken. Our test vehicle came with options which are priced below. [review] The LC70 looks like it can trace its ancestry all the way back to the Toyota BJ of the 1950s, and it can. For a while there was just the one LandCruiser, but in the late '60s the line split with the J50 station wagon body, which developed into the 60 Series, 80 Series, 100 Series and today's 200 Series. On the other hand, what is now the LC70 line has remained pretty much the same in basic design and looks, right up until the latest update in 2016. The basic layout of 4.5L V8 diesel with a part-time 4X4 system and live axles was maintained, but changed were: Cruise control added. Taller 2nd and 5th gears, by 7% and 15% which contribute to fuel saving. Electronic driving aids - traction control and stability control, with advanced ABS (brake distribution and brake force assist), hill start assist. 5 star safety on the single cab only - airbags, strengthening, steering link relocation. A diesel particulate filter (DPF), other changes to make it Euro 5 emissions compliant. Engine upgrades that are claimed to improve fuel consumption by 10.1%. Changing the split-rim steel rims to one-piece with tubeless tyres (Workmate, our tester is a GXL with alloys). A single 130L tank, except for the Troopy which retains two 90L tanks. Auto locking front hubs instead of manuals. Front seatbelt pre-tensioners. Engine immobiliser. New infotainment unit with Bluetooth and MP3 CD player. A total of around 1.3 million LC70s have been sold worldwide, and one-fifth of those are in Australia. The previous update was in March 2007 when the LC76 wagon was offered, along with the V8 turbo-diesel. In 2012 the dualcab variant was offered, and GXL grades got standard twin cross-axle differential locks. Our tester is the LC79 dualcab, and we had it for ten days during which we drove it around town, offroad and on long-distance cruises. Price and specification as tested: LC79 dualcab: $68,990.00 Air Conditioning: $2,761.00 Metallic Paint: $550.00 Colour-coded Steel Tray with chequer plate floor: $4,025 Ladder: $499.97 Towbar: $627.00 Tow ball: $31.24 Lower Toolbox: $546.00 Trailer Wiring Harness: $234.00 Head Board Spare Tyre Hanger: $134.90 TOTAL: $78,399.11 What's what The generic name for this vehicle class is LC70. Within that there is: Wagon - LC76 Troop carrier - LC78 Single cab chassis - LC79 SCC Dualcab - LC79 DCC How is the LC70 different? Now the Defender is gone, the other top-selling utes are all variations on a theme - independent front end, live rear with leaves, all trying to be modern wagons as well as utes. There's a couple of exceptions though, the NP300 dualcab has a coil rear end and the low-volume importers like the RAM Laramie offer a different class of vehicle. But the LC79 is different from the mainstream dualcabs because it has: Live axle at the front compared to independent. Disc brakes at the rear compared to drum. Manual only, and 5-speed compared to 6 speed autos. Payload of 1125kg - more than any other dualcab ute, and up to 1235kg in single cabs. 16" wheels compared to 17" or greater. The GCM is the same as the sum of the GVM and 3500kg max braked tow rating. There is a massive difference between the sum of the front and rear axle loads and the GVM. A much larger capacity engine, 4.5L V8 instead of 2 to 3.2L 4 to 6 cylinder engines. Generally in almost every way, the LC70 is basic and old. And it's more expensive. So, why bother? Well, a bit of a clue is given in the specifications above, which can be translated in English to "heavy duty ute". But we'll get into that later, so read on. Interior Basic is the operative word here. The heating/cooling controls are not touchscreen (good) or even dials, they're '80s spec levers. There is one interior light and that's in the middle, not even one up front. Seating adjustment is just fore/aft and recline. There is no mirror in the sunvisor. The dashboard is basic too. There's no temperature or fuel consumption display, but you do get a DPF gauge (more on that here). There is no courtesy delay light and certainly no puddle lamps. No steering wheel controls. No split aircon. You know all those little modern touches on modern cars? Forget it. However, there is Bluetooth, which works quite well even at 100km/h, and remote central locking. You know the answer to keyless start. It's not a thing for the LC70. At the back the rear seats fold forwards and down. There is room to store some gear behind the seats, or they could be removed entirely. Toyota also provide a decent bottle jack. The LC79 comes as a cab chassis with optional tray which has been fitted to our test vehicle, plus a dual battery install. Our tester also had access ladders and steps. The snorkel is standard. The tray is pretty decent. Looks well made, and there's good tie-downs on the bed which are recessed into the floor. The dimensions are 1840mm width and 1800mm length. The sides fold down and can be removed, and there are tie-down rails along the sides. LC70 utes must be optioned with trays, or choose an aftermarket unit. The infotainment unit offers a CD player, USB port, aux-in, Bluetooth, AM/FM and has buttons not a touch-screen which is definitely a positive. It is a decent unit for the vehicle, but there's no modern features. And yes, those heating controls are out of a 1980s Corolla. They still work though. Below the aircon is an actual electric antenna that extends and retracts when the radio is switched on, or you can do it manually. The side pockets in the doors are tiny, but at least they exist. The blue-grey is straight from the '80s and not to everyone's taste. The glovebox isn't massive either. There are at least two 12v sockets, both visible here, and an ashtray. The centre console has a removeable tray, and is quite spacious: Overall, think of 1990s design and features...that's the LC70. Now that sounds like a terrible thing to say, but in fact it's not that bad. Everything is easy to use because it's all buttons, levers and dials, no touch screens, there's space to bolt your own things in like extra drinks holders, and it's all easy to use. Plus there is a certain charm to the simplicity of the design which is refreshing after so many modern try-hards. You'd want to customise it a bit, but the LC70's interior does lend itself to practical if not comfortable offroading. What's it got? Not a lot of advanced tech here. There's a part-time 4X4 system now with manually lockable or automatic locking hubs, which we will describe in another post. The transfer case offers 2WD (2H), 4WD high (4H) and 4WD low range (4Lo). You can shift from 2H to 4H at speed, although our 79 wasn't very keen on the operation. You can even shift from 4Lo to 4H at speed too. Read more - Why Toyota is wrong about the LC70's hubs. Electronic driving aids are new to the LC70. Here's a rundown: VSC - Vehicle Stability Control, otherwise known as ESC. A-TRC - Brake Traction Control. TRC - Engine Traction Control. ABS - Antilock Braking System. Brake Assist - detects an emergency stop and increases brake pressure. EBD - Electronic Brakeforce Distribution. Hill Start Assist. A full explanation of these technologies can be found here: How 4X4 electronic driving aids work and the Toyota-specific implementations are shared with other Toyota 4WDs, explained here: Fortuner and HiLux technical analysis Here is the button that offroaders love, the front and rear cross-axle differential locks. You engage the rear first, and this disables brake traction control on the front axle, so you may as well twist the dial further and engage the front one too. We have a video showing the effects later in this review. The 70 has long had front and rear cross-axle lockers available as an option, but since 2012 they are standard on GXL models and $1500 for Workmate. Aircon remains an "option" at $2761. There is also now a DPF, along with a manual burn option. We have an explanation of how DPFs work here and a post on how hot the LC70's DPF gets when it burns off. There is also an idle-up switch: When the V8 was fitted to the LC70 in 2007 Toyota had to widen the front track to accommodate the engine. They simply didn't bother at the back, so all LC70s since have had this odd crab stance. There's no new tech to the LC70, just the tried and true fundamentals. The standout feature is the front cross-axle locker which is rare these days. A handy feature is that you can also keystart the vehicle (start it in gear), something that has been deleted from even the HiLux. And the DPF gauge and manual burn option are welcome. It is no coincidence that the notable features all relate to bushabiity, not comfort. Onroad The LC79 is no corner carver, more a chainsaw than a scalpel. Let's start with the good, which is visibility. As the car is so old you sit high with an upright windscreen and small A-pillars, so you can see everything. Stepping into something like my Ranger after an LC70 drive feels like you're in a snug racecar. The LC79's traction is also surprisingly good, even in the wet. I think that's because of the lazy-revving engine with low-down torque, so I drove it relying on the torque in higher gears rather than using lots of revs. It is possible to drive quickly but you do need to work for it both with the handling and use of the engine which is very much for load lugging not revving. That's it for onroad goodness. On the negative side - the engine is noisy, as are the gears especially in lower ratios. With the taller 5th gear you're now at 2000rpm at 100km/h, which is still at least 300rpm too high and you do miss a sixth gear. There's lots of wind noise. Directional stability is not great. The turning circle is a huge 14.4m and the steering is slow. The steering is reach and tilt adjustable, but many drivers find their knees uncomfortably close to the steering column which is at least height/reach adjustable. The wing mirrors are not electric and jiggle a bit. The cruise control does work well, and I had to smile when I saw it's the same switch as fitted in the Lexus RC F. Parts sharing extends beyond the headunit! The engine works well from about 700rpm which is good, but just converts diesel to noise above 3000rpm and to the 4500rpm redline, so you're better off swapping cogs before 2500rpm. First gear is so low it's not worth using to pull away unloaded, just start in second and use the long-throw, slow gearshift to jump directly to fourth. At least with skip-shifting you don't need many gear changes. I daily-drove the 79 in traffic for a while and thought it was livable, not my first choice but you could do it. Just drive to the strengths of the car - torque, visibility - and it's all good. Dirt roads The 79 is pretty good on dirt roads. It's not a sharp handler or anything like a rally car, but it rides quite well and doesn't hurt for traction once it's in 4WD. When the electronics do come in they come in late and help not hinder in typical modern Toyota fashion, so if they get really busy then you're doing something wrong. The suspension is quite well suited for the rougher dirt roads, it's a better ride than some IFS 4X4s thanks to the ability of the front end to flex. Offroad The good first - that engine. It has gobs and gobs of torque in first low, all nicely controlled with a near-perfect throttle delivery, and can deliver it as quickly and precisely as you like. In second it's not as good though, the higher gear ratio isn't always a bonus offroad. For a leaf-spring rear end the flex is good too, although after 9000km our test car did look a little saggy in the back. The factory sidesteps are high up, and the 44:1 crawl ratio is nicely low. You can often just let the car idle along in first low, feet off pedals. Then there's the cross-axle differential locks, standard on GXLs, optional on Workmaktes and not available for some basic 70s. Once locked these give the 79 a huge degree of offroad capability, but they're not perfect. The rear comes in fairly quickly, the front not so much, but both can take a while to disengage. The 2016 models onwards of the 70 have a new style of locking hub. This is not an improvement as it removes the ability to drive in low range in 2WD, or isolate the front drivetrain in the event of failure. However, it works pretty well for a locking hub, keeping the vehicle in 4WD even with back-forth movements. For really tough going it would still be a good idea to lock them manually rather than relying on the automatic facility though. Now to the not so good. Obviously there's the wheelbase which is quite long at 3180mm although not even as long as the Ranger at 3200. The turning circle is huge at 14.4m, and the length with the tray is 5220mm. This is not a maneuverable vehicle by any means. There is now brake traction control, which Toyota call Active TRC. This works well to a point, then gives up. It is nowhere near as effective as the same system seen on Prado, Fortuner, HiLux or LC200. It's like Toyota's engineers just spent half a day on it and then went home. Maybe they thought the difflocks would do the job instead. To some extent they're right, but the LC70's traction control calibration is definitely below-par and not up to Toyota's standards. It should be much better, and properly complement the cross-axle lockers. The real negative is that the LC70 is also prone to getting hung up on those massive leaf springs which are underslung the axle. Like this: And if you avoid the springs you're liable to hit the diff: And this: The photos above were taken in the course of a normal offroad drive, the vehicle wasn't specially positioned for it. Here's an example: There is however a solution to the clearance problem: Portal axles from Mark's 4WD Adaptors, seen here with 35-inch tyres. That lifts the diffs and the springs well out of the way, and also changes the rear track to the same as the front. Overall, the LC79 is a very capable offroad machine, mostly thanks to its twin lockers. We also know it is considerably less bothered by heavy loads than most other vehicles. Here's a short video showing how the LC79's traction control and lockers work: https://youtu.be/LhQfKRawZ9w Towing We didn't tow with the LC79 this time, but the numbers tell a very interesting story. First, there's a 3500kg tow rating, which is not unusual these days but what is unusual is that it is a bit more real than the average ute 3500kg rating, not one dreamed up by marketing with small print that means you can't actually use it. Specifically, the 79's GVM is 2175kg and its GVM is 3300kg so there is a useful 1125kg of payload, more than other dualcabs, and more than most single cabs. The GCM is 6800kg, which is 3300 + 3500kg. That means that you can tow your full 3500kg when the 79 is fully loaded, unlike most vehicles. Then we have the front and rear axle loadings of 1480kg and 2300kg, which total 3780kg. That is 480kg more than the GVM, so you have considerable load flexibility front and rear. It also means that if you put a bar and winch on it then you aren't instantly exceeding the front axle load, as you would in say the N70 HiLux. The massive 2300kg rear axle load means that you can add on your 400kg or so of towball mass and probably not exceed the rear axle load. Why 400kg? Because the towball is some distance behind the rear axle so a 350kg towball mass is more than 350kg on the rear axle, and it also decreases load on the front axle too. Now those figures above are good, but bear in mind that LC79s do not come with a tray so that weight needs to be factored into the equation too. The summary is that the LC70 isn't the world's finest handling tow vehicle, and it lacks modern aids like trailer stability control or even all-wheel-drive. On the other hand, it does have a wonderfully luggy engine and the basic, solid engineering has the specifications to actually pull heavy duty loads, not just numbers to make a glossy brochure look good. Safety Only the single cab 79 is a 5-star rated vehicle. There's no ANCAP rating for any others, but as the single cab prior to the 2016 safety upgrades rated 3 stars in 2010 through to 2015 it's fair to assume the non-single cabs would be around the same in 2017. The non-single cabs miss out on several safety features such as extra airbags, steering link relocation, more rigid frame and height-adjustable seating. However, all models now have pre-tensioning seatbelts and seatbelt warnings. The rear centre seatbelt in the dualcab is only a lap belt not a two-point shoulder belt. There are no child restraints but there are aftermarket solutions. The electronic safety solutions for the MY2016 models are stability control and advanced ABS - electronic brake distribution and electronic brake assist. There is no reversing camera, and the vehicle needs one. Don't buy an LC79 dualcab if safety is a concern. Range and pricing There are four styles of LC70: Wagon - LC76 Troop carrier - LC78 Single cab chassis - LC79 Dualcab - LC79 All are fundamentally the same vehicle, but different bodies and wheelbases. The LC76 has a wheelbase of 2730mm, the LC78 Troopy is 2980mm and the utes are 3180mm. There are three trim levels - Workmate, GX and GXL. The dualcab is available in Workmate and GXL only. For the LC79 here's the breakdown of what key features available in which trim level: LC79 Workmate $64,990 Cruise control 16x6" steel wheels 225/95/16 tyres Tilt/reach steering Vinyl seats Bluetooth LC79 GXL $68,990 Variable intermittent wipers Power windows Remote and central locking Front fog lamps Rear seat pockets Cloth seats Folding rear seat 16x7" alloy wheels 265/70/17 tyres Front and rear cross-axle locking differentials Options Aircon $2761 (for all) Front and rear cross-axle differential locks $2735 (not standard on single cab GX or double-cab Workmate) It's pretty clear that for recreational offroaders the GXL is going to be the vehicle to buy. For an extra $4000 you get twin lockers, central locking, alloys and a few extra niceties. You must remember to budget another $2761 for the aircon, and if you are buying a dualcab or single cab then you'll need more again for the body or tray. Read more: canopy or service body for your ute? Why would you buy an LC79? To buy an LC79 dualcab GXL you'll need $68,990 for the vehicle, $2761 for the aircon and anywhere between $5000 and $15,000 for the service body, as a basic tray isn't going to suit for offroading. In other words, the vehicle is about $71,500 plus onroads, followed by more money to do something with the back. A total spend of $100k is very easily achieved if you're going to set up an LC70 for touring, and then owners slot in a six-speed auto, portals, fix the rear track or add an overdrive, so some LC70 builds are up towards $150k. That is a huge amount of money for any ute. The basic LC79 is more than a Ranger PX2 Wildtrak (about $65k driveaway), and way more than a HiLux SR5 ($62k driveaway). And this for a manual 5-speed, with an old engine, poor fuel economy, still questionable safety, a dated interior, very few convenience features, not even world-class offroad capability, and Toyota couldn't even be bothered to make the front and rear axles the same track or fit proper interior lights. In fact, they have done the bare minimum to keep the vehicle alive. So why on earth would anyone bother with the LC70? Because it is the most reliable outback heavy-duty workhorse ute you can buy, bar none. The design is old, but because of that it's been proven, proven and proven again. Toyota know how to build reliable offroaders, and the LC70 epitomises all that knowledge. The lack of mod-cons is an attraction to the buyers too, it's less to go wrong. The live axles, leaf springs and part-time 4WD system are all old, but simple and reliable. Toyota said in their press release that "We have also checked the diesel particulate filter is well protected and we found there are no issues for it or the new piezo injectors resulting from local fuel in the outback" which are words you want to hear and won't find in any other ute press release. There is your reason to buy an LC70, if you prize dependable reliability and ability to get the hard jobs done above all else - above things like comfort, safety and convenience. Owners of LC70s will look you in the eye and ask how much you value your adaptive cruise control or electric mirrors when your vehicle is throwing a computer fault halfway along the Birdsville Track. And they have a point. They will also talk about resale. In 20 years time, people will still want the LC70. That shiny new ute? Won't be worth a fraction of the LC70's value, so yes you pay a lot now, but you have a vehicle for the ages, with timeless looks and reliability. And many of the features the LC70 is missing can be added easily enough, for example reversing cameras, interior lights, better seats. It's harder to engineer in basic load-carrying reliability. If you want to understand more then read our story on why this reader switched from a Discovery 3 to an LC79. Further reading Toyota LC200 Sahara offroad review Toyota Fortuner offroad review Toyota Prado offroad review Why I switched to a LC79 from a Discovery 3 How hot does a DPF burn? Why Toyota is wrong about the LC70's hubs.

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