Why the Land Cruiser 1958 Edition Is Toyota’s Best* Off-Roady SUV

KEY DISCLOSURES: I’m a Toyota Land Cruiser owner, having owned two 60 Series Land Cruisers in my life, one gas and currently a diesel. I have a pronounced bias toward TLCs, which, as you will find out, cuts both ways.

And despite the bold headline, I have not driven the entire current lineup of Toyota SUVs, unlike staffers such as Scott Evans (Land Cruiser), Billy Rehbock (Sequoia), Eric Tingwall (Highlander), and Bob Hernandez (our in-house Buyer’s Guide expert on all of them). And I certainly haven’t taken any of them off-roading, as we did during a recent comparison test. My foundation for this piece is based on more than a week driving a 2025 Toyota Tacoma TRD Sport, followed by another week in a 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser 1958 Edition. During our 2025 SUV of the Year competition, I also drove a high-spec "First Edition" version of the new Land Cruiser (a.k.a. Prado, a.k.a. 250 Series) and its platform-mate, the even higher-spec Lexus GX, that comes with an entirely different powertrain and a third row of seating.

Yet I’m happy to shout from the hills, in the waning days of 2024, that the Land Cruiser 1958 is the best off-roady SUV Toyota currently makes. Annoyed already? Great, let’s go places.

See All 18 Photos18

New Land Cruiser Is Cushy and Familiar

As I swapped from the Tacoma TRD Sport to the Land Cruiser 1958, what hit me like a pillow-soft Jake Paul punch was its cushiness. Despite being the entry-level Land Cruiser trim, it’s a MyPillow for your butt—conservative, cush, and covered in warm, fuzzy dark gray cloth. The overstuffed couch vibes match how it goes down the road—pleased and completely unbothered.

Despite being 193.8 inches long with 8.7 inches of ground clearance, the 1958 drives surprisingly small. And its easy driving nature hits you before you even shift into gear and pull out of the driveway.

Remember the FJ Cruiser? The family resemblance is strong when you approach the 1958, with its simple round headlights, short overhangs, and chunky body sides. The FJ’s exterior is just as awesome but compromised by forward-opening rear half doors that make it a chore to access the second row, especially in suburban mall parking lots (where you, ahem, find many of these FJs).

Chunky black plastic door handles manually open all four of the 1958’s traditional doors. The seats and steering wheel, both heated, are manually controlled—just like my 60 Series. This means old-school levers adjust the rake of the backrest and slide the seat forward and back. A lever under the steering column tilts (only) the steering wheel.

The new 250 Series interior gives off none of the over-compensating vibes of the old FJ Cruiser or new Tacoma TRD Sport. In particular, the 1958 Land Cruiser trim turns the volume down on all the OFFROAD BRO styling, with lots of real, normal-sized dials and buttons and levers, free from notches, knurling, and diamond plating. That there are low-key physical controls for air-conditioning, radio, and off-road modes (center/rear locking diffs) is another old-school blessing, befitting this entry level Land Cruiser.

Even the new tech has a back-to-basics approach, unlike that fully kitted-out Tacoma TRD Sport, which overwhelms with a massive 14.0-inch touchscreen that's too close and too bright for the driver. That display also switches to a multiangle view from all the cameras when speeds dip below around 10 mph. This was useful for pulling into tight spots, but at every stop sign and light, it’s jarring to the point of annoying. The auto display option can be disabled, but then you’re without it when you’re about to bang the bumper or back into a trash can.

The 1958 has a better way, via simple audio alerts, in different pitches for front and rear sensors. The system is never intrusive, just like the 8.0-inch infotainment display in the center of the dash, which has more than enough real estate for Apple CarPlay or the Toyota native navigation, music, and other apps. The 12.3-inch touchscreen on the higher-end Land Cruiser trims seems excessive, but I appreciate that the interior design team made this screen wider (not taller), as the sightlines out of the car are great. The 1958 is easy to position between the lines on the highway and in the parking lot.

See All 18 Photos18

Relax, the Hybrid Powertrain Is Fine

Sacrificed at the altar of fuel economy, weight, and cost is the large, understressed, naturally aspirated V-8 that went away with the 200 Series Land Cruiser. In that iteration, its V-8 displaced 5.7 liters while making 381 hp and 401 lb-ft of torque.

Instead, a 2.4-liter hybrid inline-four powers the new Land Cruiser!? Relax—it’s more than fine, propelling the truck down the road with grace, pace, and frankly astonishing horsepower (326 hp), torque (426-lb-ft), and fuel economy numbers V-8 LC owners could only dream about at 22/25 mpg city/highway. Of course, in real-world driving, we never saw better than 18–19 mpg, but those are also better than the 14–15 mpg anecdotal averages from the previous-gen V-8.

Diehard fans won’t have philosophical objections to a turbo four-cylinder engine; diesel and gas inline-fours (with and without turbos) powered Land Cruisers around the world, primarily in the 40 and 70 Series. On the road, the hybrid powertrain is everything you want in a 5,400-pound SUV. All that torque makes the Land Cruiser 1958 feel super responsive, with only a bit of turbo whoosh under load. Freeway cruising and passing (a sore subject with early LCs) is a breeze, and when mooching around parking lots, the hybrid system will shut the engine completely off to run on electrical power. Adding a turbo and hybrid battery system does introduce unwanted complexity to a nameplate built on reliability in the harshest, most remote regions of the world, but this is also true: If anyone is going to build a dead-nuts reliable hybrid system, you gotta believe it would be Toyota.

See All 18 Photos18

Old-School Land Cruiser Touches Still Resonate

Along with the V-8, gone is the iconic split tailgate, long a feature of Land Cruisers sold in the U.S. and great for tailgating and camp cooking when parked, carrying logs (surfboards and/or actual timber), and simply as a bench seat. Some of the old-school functionality still remains, however, such as its flip-up rear hatch window. Under covers behind the second seats and cargo bay are traditional Land Cruiser kit: a bottle jack, first aid kit, and simple tools for releasing and changing the underbody-mounted full-size spare.

Less fun is the “max storage” configuration of 250 Series, in which the second-row seat backs fold down as the lower cushion flips forward. It’s functionally great that the seats tip forward and out of the way, but what's left is a lumpy valley of packaging discontent on the way to the flat battery back that spans the cargo area. While overland accessory outfitters will no doubt find all manner of neat solutions for this awkwardness, it’s instructive to reflect on what the standard used to be.

My 60 Series Land Cruiser was the last two-row Land Cruiser sold in the U.S. The lower cushion of that second-row bench seat could flip forward and the back cushion fold down, creating a huge cargo area with a perfectly flat load floor. How big? Enough room for two 6 footers to stretch out and sleep on an inflatable mattress—in a vehicle 10 inches shorter than the new Land Cruiser. Headroom over the second row is also decapitated if you opt for the sunroof, yet another reason the lowest-spec 1958 is the one for me.

The Land Cruiser 1958 Edition kicks off the Land Cruiser line, with a base price of $57,900. That’s a huge drop when you consider that the entry-level price for a Land Cruiser in 2021, the last time it was sold in the U.S., was $85,665. The 2024 model 1958 Edition I drove around stickered for $60,790, which included an $80 federal emissions fee and a handful of options, such as a ball mount for the tow hitch ($130), a roof rack ($1,440), rock rails ($990), a front skidplate ($440), and the transmission ($365). As far as press vehicles go, it was about as stripped down as it gets—and the reason why I loved it so. Honest, off-roady goodness in a handsome, easygoing package.

I love what you don’t do for me, Toyota.