Toyota put a modern turbo V6 into its Eighties Land Cruiser and it’s quite brilliant

This is no ordinary Land Cruiser, even if Toyota went to great lengths to make it look very ordinary. Meet the ‘Turbo Trail Cruiser’: a very old FJ60 outfitted with a very new turbocharged engine and buckets of power.

How many buckets? Enough to carry 389bhp and 479lb to the well and back, courtesy of a 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 found in the equally ordinary – though modern – Toyota Tundra. That’s nearly twice as powerful as the original FJ60’s inline six.

We’re sold and need hear no more. Though we shall, because the point of this ‘hot-rod’ restomod wasn’t about filling every inch of the Land Cruiser’s boxy body with horsepower and attitude, but about making it “feel more modern, streetable and capable than ever”. ‘Streetable’ is a thing now, apparently.

“Unlike many efforts, the Turbo Trail Cruiser was built with a singular philosophy,” said Toyota, “to appear factory original.” Hence why the mods avoided eating into the FJ’s firewall, mounting points or changing its structure in any way.

The V6 needed new mounts and adapter plates to better locate it onto the FJ60’s factory five-speed gearbox, while the oil pan was redesigned to better fit into the chassis. There’s a new exhaust – with an “aggressive” note – a new heat exchanger, and a custom wiring harness.

Elsewhere, Toyota lifted the thing by 1.5in, gave it 35in tyres, “period-correct" colours and graphics – acceptable in the Eighties, naturally – and stuck in a new JBL stereo to play all those classic Eighties pop hits.

“It’s a hot-rod approach with Toyota DNA,” said Toyota Motorsports Garage’s Marty Schwerter, who led the build for SEMA, “power, driveability, and reliability in a package that still feels true to the original Land Cruiser.”

You know what would make it extraordinary? Stick a warmed-over 2JZ in there.