Pick of the Day: 1992 Toyota Land Cruiser J70

Foreign car makers don’t import their complete roster to the American market. As such, sometimes we miss out on some really neat vehicles. Here’s something you may missed out on 30 years ago.

The Pick of the Day gives you an opportunity to make up for lost time: an original-paint 1992 Toyota Land Cruiser J70 listed for sale on ClassicCars.com by a dealer in Idaho. (Click the link to view the listing)

To American eyes, J40 Land Cruisers in the U.S. were a Japanese interpretation of the Jeep; Toyota aso imported the J60 wagon before SUV entered our vocabulary. The truth is that the Land Cruiser saga is filled with variation after variation, with different parts of the world having variations within those. America’s history with the Land Cruiser began with the U.S. government commissioning Toyota to build a handful of Willys-spec Jeeps for the Korean War, with the manufacturer using what it learned to develop the Jeep BJ, which was christened “Land Cruiser” in 1954.

The classic J40 Land Cruiser, as we know it, was produced for 24 years starting in 1960 (with production continuing through 1991 in Brazil). It was succeeded by the J70 series in 1984, though this series was never sold in the U.S., though it was available for a few years in Canada. (When you see them referred to as “FJ,” as Americans usually know it, it hints that it’s powered by a series of engines that used gasoline.)

This 1992 J70 Land Cruiser is part of the same series that would become the Lexus GX, but 30 years ago there was no equivalent in the U.S. According to the seller, this rust-free vehicle spent most of its life in southwestern France. Before recently being imported to the U.S., the seller says new brakes and rockers were installed. Yes, the title is clean—as clean as the vintage original paint and interior, which looks great for 132,749 miles.

Perhaps you’ll need your smart phone to handle modernities like GPS, but this Land Cruiser still features such desirable options like air conditioning, power windows, and shift-on-the-fly four-wheel drive. Maybe best of all, all this legendary goodness is powered by a turbo-Diesel engine with and a 5-speed manual transmission.

To view this listing on ClassicCars.com, see Pick of the Day. The asking price for this SUV is $33,000.