THE 80 FOR THE 90’s AND BEYOND
SAHARA
IF YOU watched Toyota’s official global presentation of its upcoming 300 Series LandCruiser, you would know that special praise was directed at the LandCruiser 80 Series and its honoured and unique place in LandCruiser history.
Toyota 300 Series chief engineer Takami Yokoo said that in designing and developing the 300, the engineering team “used the 80 as a guidepost”. He went on to say “even 30 years after it first appeared, it has the best rough-road performance of any LandCruiser”. By ‘rough-road’ performance you can read ‘off-road’ performance and, given the 100, and more so the 200, brought significant advances in off road performance by enhancing chassis and powertrain electronics, that’s a big call.
These electronic driver’s aids have culminated in off-road specific electronic traction control complete with driver-selectable terrain-specific programs, and so-called ‘Crawl Control’ where all the driver has to do is steer and the vehicle ‘smarts’ do the rest, even in the most
