The context before that quote is very interesting.
> “We don’t really think of them as cars,” TGS co-chief executive Jonathan Gourlay tells me. “We’re just giving our customers a tool that does a job, whether that’s feeding children or delivering medicines.” You might think, like me, that the 70 Series Land Cruiser is utterly cool and want one very badly, but cool plays no role here – this is transport at its most fundamental. Simplicity, capability and reliability overrule everything. “If you look back 25 years, there were a few players in this market,” Gourlay continues. “There was Land Rover, there was Nissan and Mitsubishi, but gradually they’ve focused on building what I’d call ‘first world’ vehicles for Europe and North America.
The world needs affordable solutions to people’s problems. Good luck telling a third-world farmer the world doesn’t need their truck when that same truck enables the farmer’s livelihood. Such a sentiment is especially funny coming from someone in the first world, whose lifestyle emits way more CO2 than someone in the third world.
This is exactly the quote that I came to post. It's still in my clipboard.
This vehicle is built not for I-can-get-to-a-mechanic Europe. This vehicle is build for no-mechanic-for-1000-km Africa, to deliver food and medicines. And I'm sure that armies love them too. Even though they state:
> But a firm line is drawn at anything that could be construed as military use.
Yes. Having been in these across the Sahara they are the only model that people trust in the literal middle of nowhere. It's more than just the lack of electronics. The bearings and suspension hold up to brutal conditions such as driving across badlands for hours and sand everywhere.
In 2006 I visited Timbuctoo. These things are ubiquitous there. All cars waiting for the ferry across the Niger were Toyota Landcruisers, with one exception: a Toyota Hilux. Leaving the city (by Landcruiser of course) across the desert, we came across other Landcruisers, as well as a single Mitsubishi 4WD that had broken down.
Rumour had it that if your Landcruiser broke down in the middle of the desert, a guy on a camel would come along and he'd be able to get you parts for your Landcruiser.
The rest of Mali had lots of aging Peugeots and the occasional Mercedes van, but the desert was clearly the domain of the Landcruiser.
You almost stumbled across the reason Toyotas are so prevalent in the third world but you missed it because it doesn't fit your biases.
A running vehicle is a hot commodity in that part of the world and with cheap labor they can fix just about anything.
So why was that Mitsubishi not fixed and running? Why is every other car in Brazil a Ford? Why do you pretty much never see a Hilux in Russia (much to the consternation of the fanboys who think it would fit well in a rural country like that)?
Supply chain.
Toyota does not make seals. They do not make bearings. They do not forge and roll their own steel. They buy the same parts everyone else in the business does. Toyota was the only major brand to pay the poor equatorial nations any attention for a long time. They were the only ones who did the hard work to establish the business relationships needed to get their service parts into the poor parts of the world. As a result of this their vehicles are the preference of the poor parts of the world, because they are the ones you can actually get the parts for.
Toyota are more reliable AND they have a great supply chain with cheap parts.
You are suggesting a cause-and-effect that is nonsense. Make an unreliable 4WD with great supply chain, and they won’t sell. Your implied assumption is that drivers in harsh environments (say outback Australia) care more about supply chain for parts than reliability - ummmm no - they have experience in what is reliable and they intelligently buy accordingly, even though Toyota is not the cheapest to buy.
Toyota is one of the few brands that actually mean something about quality of reliability: https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/the-most-and-least-expe... is a 2016 article about older cars that shows reliability (Toyota doesn’t appear on the no-start list) and “Toyota’s Tacoma and Highlander are also on the low-cost leaderboard, even though the list is dominated by compact and mid-sized sedans. Toyota completely avoids the the most expensive models list.”.
>You are suggesting a cause-and-effect that is nonsense. Make an unreliable 4WD with great supply chain, and they won’t sell.
So you're calling Jeep reliable?
That's surprising coming from someone who's clearly drank the Toyota koolaid.
>“Toyota’s Tacoma and Highlander are also on the low-cost leaderboard
These are not low cost vehicles. That's just farcical.
Furthermore, Toyota specifically avoids running good financing deals in the NA market for brand image reasons and to manipulate the secondary (used) market (basically to keep low class people from getting their hands on them and over time dumping a bunch of trashed examples on the used market dragging down the brand image e.g. Nissan Altima). Per your commentary this has clearly been very effective.
To me those appear to be more non-sequitur arguments. And I am not from the USA, so your comments are parochially myopic.
> So you're calling Jeep reliable?
Jesus no. I remember an acquaintance taking his 4WD Jeep out mud-plugging: clutch stopped working because the slave cylinder cracked — cylinder cracked because the clutch slave cylinder was poorly made and it was made out of plastic. More importantly, 4WD vehicles that sell to urban purchasers in the USA mean nothing to the context of relying on a 4WD in remote areas. Down under, Toyota is popular in outback Australia, where an unreliable vehicle is a big problem and potentially could kill you. Toyota is also popular for their reliability on farms in New Zealand (even though farms in New Zealand are mostly not so remote that reliability is a safety issue).
> low cost vehicles
Admittedly unclear, but the quotes from the linked article are talking about low cost maintenance; nothing to do purchase price. The article is obviously predominantly urban USA, because that was the only factual source I could find that wasn’t just opinion. Maintenance costs are a proxy measurement for reliability. Often maintenance costs are dominated by hours worked in my experience, so “cheap” parts cannot explain why older Toyota vehicles remain cheaper to maintain.
From what I understood, different models of Landcruiser, which can sometimes look completely different, still tend to use mostly the same components. All specifically to make it easy to maintain the things.
Honestly, that story about the guy on the camel is probably true. A Landcruiser that has finally broken down is still a source of parts for other Landcruisers.
I'd love to peer inside how Toyota made this happen at the nuts and bolts operational level. How do they deal with all the currency conversion between all the nations? What language do they transact in? How do they deal with shipping? That would be so fascinating to understand.
i'm not 100% on this car in particular as it doesn't mention in the article, but you can run a mechanical diesel engine with absolutely nothing electrical attached to it as long as it doesn't stall (in which case, you could probably bump-start it if it's hot enough and it'd start anyway). At a guess the engine in question is a 1HZ which has mechanical fuel injection.. so yes you would be OK without the above
Agreed. Furthermore, EMP events are unrealistic and on the same level as a global nuclear winter. Supply chain logistics problems, failures, and disruptions are much more real of a threat, and this is where privately owned Toyota vehicles shine.
As I understand it, the dividing line between EMP survivable and not is the starter solenoid. For example, old motorcycles with carburetors, no ECU, and (crucially) a kickstarter should still run after an EMP. If your moto fits the bill except for lacking a kickstarter, you should be able to stash a spare starter solenoid in an hardened/shielded container.
my mid 80's FJ60 had a hand crank for the gasoline engine, so, given that this article is about the 70 series that debuted in 1984--I wouldn't be surprised if it had a hand crank as well.
These are Technicals.
They are mobile, fast, cheap and reliable, and you can put all kinds of things on them. If the other side doesn’t have heavy weapons you can do a lot with that and even if they are maybe then too. The Brits showed this really well starting with Land Rovers in North Africa and plenty of folks have borrowed, improvised and improved on the idea over time but the basic idea remains.
Lovely. This world needs fewer diesels, not more :-(
What a strange response. Did you read why? The conditions? It isn't for fun, or to go get groceries. You can't get one in the EU, it is for use in war zones, disaster areas, or extreme locations!
There are few of these sold a year. Transport rigs must number in the billions, yet you complain about this, a "must use" scenario?
Your response is the "bad face" of extreme environmentalisnlm.
I suppose you think it better, to not even attempt aid??
