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 High clearance and array of lights makes Land Cruiser ready to play in the snow. Photo by john Gilbert.

Face it, we all love SUVs, even if we have no intention of buying one, or at least we’ll restrain ourselves from spending more than $75,000 for one to one-up the neighbors. 

My preference is for smaller, more compact all-wheel-drive utility vehicles because of their better economy and in-traffic agility and parking maneuverability.

But I’m always eager to try the newest and most high-tech stuff on the market, so when I got the chance to spend a week with a 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser Premium, I couldn’t wait.

The look of the new Land Cruiser is very attractive, shedding the boxy look of its predecessor, which can best be described as Highlander Squared. The corners of the new Land Cruiser are tapered artfully front and rear, and I, for one, like the appearance. Especially from the front, where the contours and tapered corners help house an array of headlights that are guaranteed to keep you heading your intended direction, day or night, summer or winter.

The rows of three LED headlights in the upper binnacle — don’t you love the word binnacle? — cast a lot of light forward, and the amber foglights sunk into the lower facia add a strong element of helping you to spot those crazy wayward deer that keep wanting to venture onto dark roadways from dusk on every night.

Inside, there is ample room to house your family, although the test vehicle had two rows of seats and an enlarged storage area at the rear — large enough that a normal human couldn’t reach far enough from the opened tailgate to retrieve a wayward jug of fresh-squeezed orange juice that chose to roll as far forward as it could get, thoroughly mixing the pulp in with the juice.

The primary attraction to me with the new Land Cruiser was the fact that it had Toyota’s new 2.4-liter i-Force 4-cylinder engine that is turbocharged to produce V6-like power, plus it was a hybrid, yielding to Toyota’s popularity of using hybrid technology in virtually everything starting this year.

However, that was my first letdown. I have gotten exceptional fuel economy out of current hybrids, especially those from Hyundai and Kia, but the old master of the art, Toyota, usually is right up there too, with the newest Prius and Prius Primes, and the Corolla Hybrids, so I was anticipating a week of 30-plus miles per gallon.

Surprise! My first few days driving around Duluth, with its hills and all, showed a mere 16.9 miles per gallon with the Land Cruiser, which was pretty unacceptable to me.

Granted, the Land Cruiser is big. Both my wife, Joan, and I declared it too big for our tastes, although larger families or families with kids who have gotten larger might disagree. 

So, on a whim, Joan and I decided to take off at noon and drive down Interstate 35 just to go to Trader Joe’s, our favorite grocery and specialty grocery store on the planet. We like the fact that on their own brands, they don’t use any high-fructose corn syrup. Just pure cane sugar, if they can’t find a way to sweeten stuff with real fruit juices. That sort of thing.

It turns out, our pleas to Trader Joe’s management that no place needs a Trader Joe’s more than Duluth have gone unheeded, although they did build a new one in Shoreview, at Lexington and I-694 — which turns out to be about a half-mile from where we lived for more than 20 years. So we missed out, but we make Trader Joe’s a staple of our objectives every time we go to the Twin Cities.

This time, as we were about to depart, I provided us both a bit of evidence of how big the Land Cruiser is. It’s high enough so you’re pleased that Toyota, while raising the underbody clearance to 8 inches on the Land Cruiser, also installed running boards on both sides to help you getting in and out. 

Only question is, did they use humans or chimpanzees for their research? As I went to vault in, a loud “clunk” alerted Joan that I might need attention. But only for a brief moment, and then I dropped into the driver’s seat.

“What was that awful noise?” she asked. 

I answered, “That was my head, striking the roof when I tried to climb in.”

Joan and I go back and forth on certain Toyota features, and I’ve written before about how the driver’s bucket seat seems supportive, but the passenger bucket seems to give Joan a backache if she rides too long. The good news was that as we were freezing down the freeway for almost two hours en route, she commented more than once about how the Land Cruiser seat seemed better than any other Toyota bucket seat she has experienced in the last couple years.

Score one on the right side of the evaluation ledger.

As we pulled off the freeway at Lexington, however, we found another element of our research. The fuel tank was barely above a quarter — meaning we had used a lot of fuel on the trip, which I found unusual because we were on cruise control the whole way, and traffic was light. 

After we loaded up on our favorite stuff at Trader Joe’s, it was only natural that we would head down Lexington a few miles to Rosedale Shopping Center, so we could do a quick visit to Macy’s. Close enough to Christmas to check for a couple gifts for our sons.

Macy’s is another prime shopping store that has ignored Duluth. And they had a pretty remarkable sale going on, although that, also, requires scrutiny. While Joan checked out the second floor, I went down the escalator to check the men’s wear. Everything was 30 percent off, and when I examined the endless stacks of Levi’s, I noticed there was no original price on them, so I had to seek help to find out “30 percent off what?” I worked my way to the front of the line, and asked, exactly that. The clerk helpfully did some gymnastics with her hand-held device and said, “The original price is $79,95.”

I almost fell over. She said, but “If you open a Macy’s charge card, you can get another 20 percent reduction, which would mean 50 percent off.” Impressive, indeed, but paying $40 for a pair of Levi’s struck me the wrong way — especially when you can get them at regular price for about that much in Duluth!

Then it was time to head home, so our final side-trip was to stop0at Savoy’s pizza to buy a small pizza that we could indulge in as we cruised up 35. The guy at Savoy’s took Joan’s credit card, and made a mistake — he made a large sausage, pepperoni and onion pizza by mistake and gave it to her.

By then, the Land Cruiser’s fuel gauge was dangerously low, so we stopped at a gas pump. First thing I noticed when I opened the little trap door and was already filling the tank that the little notification on the filler’s wall said, “Unleaded Premium, only.” Too late, I had put in 8 gallons of high-test regular already, so I drove on it a way before filling it the rest of the way with non-oxygenated premium, at a price that was far beyond what I had imagined.

The Land Cruiser probably began life trying to steal buyers from the already-known British Land Rovers, but whatever, this new high-tech i-Force 4 with its turbocharger, bolstered by the 1.87 kilowatt battery pack, developed an impressive 326 horsepower and 465 foot-pounds of torque. That’s enough to give you a 6,000-pound towing maximum, but our cruising fuel economy without a trailer was only 17.9 miles per gallon. Amazingly, on our next tankful of only city driving, we got 18.0.

Not enough, I say, even with all the amenities such as the new large-screen information board, easy to identify and reach controls, 14-speaker JBL premium sound system, multi-terrain selector switch with hill-descent control, alerts for blind-spot, dark oversized alloy wheels, front and rear collision detection, electronic central differential lock, center-differential stabilizer, full-time all-wheel drive, and the 8-speed electronically controlled automatic transmission.

The final positive, if we’re weighing pluses and minuses, is that Toyota stopped building the Land Cruiser for the last couple of years, and maybe that’s because people stopped buying them at upwards of $75,000.

When Toyota brought back the Land Cruiser for 2024, it slimmed down its overstuffed being to make it sleeker and better, and it lowered its price base to $50,000. 

The test Land Cruiser I had showed a $61,950 base price, and as tested it was $70,074. That’s edging up there, but still a good $25,000 lower than what the same vehicle would have cost a couple years ago.