5 Things I Love About My Cheap Land Cruiser (and 1 Thing I Hate)

Here's another one you all probably forgot that I had, my 1999 Lexus LX470, a luxury version of the invincible Toyota Land Cruiser that I bought for only $2,100. It was the cheapest running Land Cruiser available at the time, but it has 350,000 miles on it. Though the miles don't matter on these, it still runs and drives great and pretty much everything works, which is why these things are renowned by everybody from adventurists to terrorists. Now, even with the miles, these things sell for a lot more money, but the main reason it was so cheap was because of the roached interior and the giant hole in the rear hatch. Neither of these issues were bad enough to tempt me to bury this thing into the ground, and I've actually had some things looked after on the inside, and I have all the things to start the expedition build rig with this thing. It's at the wizard's shop. More on that later, because now I'm going to show you all the cool things that I like about this luxury Lexus Land Cruiser, as well as all the things that I don't. Really, the list isn't that long. It's one thing that I don't like, but I'll try to dig into it as much as I can. So while we're outside, I might as well start with the first thing that I like, and that's the styling. The Lexus treatment of the front end with the cool headlights and the extra cladding below really classes this buggy up. Now, it's certainly a stretch to call this thing pretty, but as far as 90s era SUVs go, looks wise, it's near the top of the list, and it's way, way better than Lexus' current offerings with front ends that look like they're designed to eat pedestrians. I wouldn't be surprised if Arnold Schwarzenegger tried burying himself in the mud and shooting at the side of these new modern Lexuses, or Lexi, Lexi? What's plural Lexus? Lexi, bleh. You're one ugly mother- I'll get you, chopper! Anyway, I haven't found a rear hatch to replace this rusty one yet, but I did have a tetanus shot recently. It just locked itself. And I'm opening this thing to show you another thing that I like, which is the actual rear tailgate this thing has. I much prefer it to the giant one-piece hatch that most SUVs have nowadays, and I miss the days of Tahoe and Suburban having the tailgate or the barn doors in the back. My dad actually had one of those back in the day, at the same time my mom had one of these, really actually one of these cars, and I have vivid memories of singing along to Mariah Carey's greatest hits with her in this car. Thankfully for everyone, YouTube copyright rules prevents me from recreating this childhood memory. Now, probably the reason that I remember Mariah Carey's emotions way up in the heavens above, you know, it's got me feeling these emotions, is because of this amazing Nakamichi stereo. Lexus' version of Bose or Harman Kardon or Beats, though I doubt Mr. Nakamichi had any hip-hop albums out before he started making stereos. I love the simple LCD display on the radio as well as the rest of the car, and it has buttons to access everything on the stereo, and same with everything else in the car. There's no iDrive to go through with menus and submenus and menus within a menu to turn on your heated seats. Everything here literally has a button I can push to make it work, right down to the power antenna that I can raise and lower manually. And my usual grumpy old man routine about the comfort of seats doesn't apply so much to Lexus because their seats are still pretty cushy today, but still they're not even close to as comfortable as their older seats in this car. For some reason, older cars have extra cushions and less side bolster because, for some reason, it's trendy to make all cars have, like, Recaro racing seats, and it just doesn't make any sense in a giant SUV like this. Now, y'all probably don't remember this before, but I'll put in video footage of before of how the seats in the interior looked. The bottoms were torn up and the shifter and the steering wheel all had wear, and now I've had everything fixed. Now, the interior could use a pretty good detail, but at least it doesn't look like the disastrous shredded aftermath of a horrible Taco Tuesday like it did before. Motion! Deep up in the heavens above! Oh, oh, yeah! That's the feeling! Now that we're underway, smoothness is another thing I'd like to point out with this Lexus that is just so good. As this thing manages to have all of its off-road cartability but still ride down the road as smooth as an S-Class, and the engine is also really smooth. New V8s with their fancy valve trains and direct injection systems are just so noisy. They're tappy, almost like it sounds broken, while Lexus V8s have been able to maintain that smooth, sewing machine-like operation. The hydraulic suspension also plays a part in this truck's smoothness and versatility, but I actually have to rip all that out in order to get a big lift and some nice mud and tires underneath it. I'm sure I'm going to miss this system, but it's apparently just about the only thing that gives these Lexus Land Cruiser owners problems. Now this thing is so good, and I really have a hard time finding any faults with it, but there is one thing I could knock, and that's the lack of soul, which Lexus has always struggled with since they started by reverse engineering Mercedes and other European luxury brands in their own kind of boring image. On paper, you would be crazy to buy a Range Rover over one of these, given how unreliable the Range Rovers are, but the Range Rover has so much more personality and pizzazz. That intangible it-factor that Land Rover has in spades to make up for its terrible reliability is seriously lacking in this rig, and Lexus's modern attempts to put a predator face on their cars isn't going to fix that. Even my old Jeep Cherokee has way more personality than this thing, and it was about a third of the price new as the Lexus. Now I'm fixing this with this particular Lexus, and I'll show you how I'm doing that with what's just arrived at the wizard shop. To the wizard's lair! Away! We're off to see the wizard! The wizard knows how to skip like the Wizard of Oz better than me, since he lives in Oz and he's the wizard, and he's looking pretty tan from his cruise. He kind of looks like George Hamilton now, doesn't he? But really, someone did yell out to you while you were feeding monkeys, right? Yeah, there was one time I was in the sports bar on the cruise ship and someone met me, and then another time there at Cumbalimba Park in Rotan, someone said, hey, wizard! So you're an internationally renowned mechanic now? I guess so. If you're going to cruise the Central America and meet people and, hey, car wizard, then... Nice. Well, we have a lot of boxes here, and this is going to be the build for my Expedition Land Cruiser rig. The first thing, I guess, we don't need to take out torsion bars, since it says it on the picture, it says torsion bars, and they're bars, and they're really heavy, but... Spring steel. Yeah. What do you got in there, wizard? What's in that box? I think this is your winch. Really? Yeah. Can we see? Yeah. Can I use a knife? I'll open it. Uh, no. I don't think you need to get a knife. I can cut it. Okay. I'll take care of it for you. He's Vanna White, only with a blade. Looks just like her, too. My daughter watches these unboxing videos for hours and hours, except hers are usually LOL surprise dolls or something. If she doesn't want to unbox her own toy, she wants to watch other people's toys. No, she'll unbox it and then never play with it again. Right. Okay. That's real purdy. Wow. Almost looks like one of those silver woven bracelets. That should pull out a LeBaron in a year, I think, huh? Well, that's exactly what we'll use it for. Very nice. Okay. It's like opening a coffin. Yes. A box within a box. Sort of. Okay. All right. We have Nitro Charger Sports from Old Man Emu. So, Australian heavy duty shocks, I suppose. They run like an Emu. Right. And then we have some big coil springs because we're ditching the hydraulic conversion or we're converting it from the hydraulic to standard suspension and giving her a little lift. It is... I have no idea what that is. Is it the mount for the winch? It looks like it. Yeah? Some kind of mount? You ordered it. I don't know. That looks like a license plate. Maybe this is... Yeah, there's some bumpers that go on the front. Okay. Maybe it goes on the rear. I don't even remember what I ordered. It was so long ago. But there's bolts and instructions. Okay. Next. Oh, I know what this is. It doesn't... Snorkel. Yes. Okay. Well, here's one elbow. Hello. Okay. Yes. That goes up the side. Right. Yes, I'll be actually cutting a hole in my pretty pristine body other than that rear hatch to put in a snorkel that I will probably never use, but it'll look very cool. Anyway. Get that little bit off. I can't hold it much longer. Alright. That's good enough. I suppose. Yeah. I... Nice... Bumper. I'm debating, and you guys can let me know in the comments, if I should paint this thing, have it like rhino lined and tan or beige to kind of match the truck. Because I think it'd look kind of funny just being black and everything else being beige. That's one thing I don't like when I was looking at pictures of expedition kind of Land Cruiser rigged things. Still pretty darn cool. Does it go to a king size bed? I don't know. Let's see. Nope. Ah, I see what these are. If only you gave me a knife. This is a slider. Looks like a bed rail. That's funny. A rock slider. Yes, rock sliders. I'm going to take off the factory running boards and put on this rock slider. Which, once again, if I paint it beige rhino lining, I think it would look pretty cool. Okay. Well, that's everything. And now I need to think of some way to close this. Any ideas? No. I think we'll have fun putting it all on for you. And I'll have fun splitting the vehicle. Putting the wizard's children through colleges. What Hoovy's Garage does. Thank you for watching. Alright.