[greenhood]

Does anyone know anything about the Toyota fj cruiser. They look pretty nice, so I assumed they were the new Land Cruiser. I looked up the msrp and they start in the in the low 20's which is not even half of what a new Cruiser used to cost. I guess the 4 runner is the top dog now? Is this truck a pile? Thanks in advance.

 

[loco-gringo]

I've been riding in one all week. I haven't driven it and have no idea how much it cost, but it seems to handle well and is comfy.

 

[Slugman]

Co-worker has one that I've driven several times.

Nice truck - powerful and handles well.

Now I just need to convince her to let me take it off road...

 

[ThePriceSeliger]

I actually own one. It's a fun car on and off road. It's cheap and powerful.

 

[Zark]

Based off the Tacoma frame too, which means loads loads off aftermarket suspension kits are available for it.

I like it a lot and it puts expensive thoughts in my head

 

[maxyedor]

It's a pretty good truck, but for the money I would go for the Tacoma. Same great platform, tons more room.

 

[jacksonpt]

What do you want to know?

It's an SUV similar in size to the older (3rd gen) 4runners. It's based on the Tacoma platform and meant to be used like a truck. It has some quirks like all new models do, and the base MSRP is pretty good, but it gets expensive in a hurry.

 

[Mike B.]

I drove a few with thoughts of replacing my Tacoma but like jacksonpt said, there are some quirks with it being a new model. Very hard to find a base model, they all seem to be pretty loaded up. In the end, I decided to keep my truck for a few more years and see how the model evolves.

 

[greenchris]

the FJ reminds me of a little larger wrangler. i wasnt really impressed when i saw one at the auto show this spring. it seems as if the rear gate doesnt open enough, so getting larger items like a bike would be a bitch.

 

[syadasti]

From a Toyota forum:

reasons to not buy one:

31 inch tire mounted directly on the rear gate, with no additional external bracing. The door hinges will fail very quickly if the truck is driven as intended. Certainly there will be lots of squeeks and groans after a few thousand miles.

The rear glass is shaped to clear the stock spare tire, but it won't clear an oversized one. So if you want to go to 33s you will have to leave the glass closed or throw the spare on the roof rack. Ooof!

Miserable exterior visibility from the driver's seat when on the trail. With a ragtop, this would be a winner off-road. It seems to be competing with the Wrangler - why does it have that cave of a hard top, with a 20 inch wide C pillar?

No rear ventilation - the glass is fixed in back. The rear passengers are going to be miserable, as well as have zero view outside..

Rear seat access requires that you open a front door, just like in a King Cab pickup. What a pain!

And I debate the "extreme off road capabilty" label. If it doesn't have a solid axle up front, it can't be extreme.

I love Toyotas trucks, but this one is a loser IMHO.

I too tested the FJ Cruiser and found it to be an interesting ride. Though, MSRP is what the fair dealers are charging and reports say there will be plenty on hand in the supply line. Here are the reasons why most of us can hold out until the price comes down or reasons to never buy it:

Hard to drive in traffic (serious blind spots)
Back seat space & lack of opening windows
No carpet / Spartan interior
No Navigation system
Poor fuel economy
No sunroof
You can get a loaded 4Runner for the same or less $$$
Won’t fit in many garages with the roof rack
The price will come down

Looks to be several design "shortcommings"... for example, the front seatbelts are attached to the rear suicide door. So if you are sitting in the driver's seat, buckled up like you should be... you open your door, then the rear door (to let a rear passenger out, for example) - the rear door yanks on yoru seatbelt.

In action: Here is one getting stuck while all the others models do fine

 

[syadasti]

Also overall Toyota's US AND Japanese products are suffering design defects/quality control problems from their inability to manage their big growth - when you come close to being as big as GM, you get their problems (which makes GM recent improvements in the past few years all the more better). See recent WSJ article:

Toyota May Delay New Models
To Address Rising Quality Issues

By NORIHIKO SHIROUZU
August 25, 2006; Page A1

Toyota Motor Corp., jarred by a surge of recalls and quality problems, is considering tapping the brakes on its ambitious growth plans, delaying introductions of some new models by as much as half a year, people familiar with the matter say.

Toyota has been accelerating its growth world-wide and moving to overtake General Motors Corp. as the world's No. 1 auto maker. In May, the company said capital expenditures in the current fiscal year would reach a record of roughly $14 billion. But the fast-paced expansion has come with a cost: an increasing number of quality problems in North America, Japan and elsewhere that threaten to dent its quality image.

According to senior executives and engineers familiar with the move, the company is considering adding as much as three to six more months to projects that normally call for roughly two to three years of development lead time, in order to stem the growing tide of quality problems. Those individuals say that while some programs would be spared, delays likely would affect a relatively wide range of projects. Among the high-volume models that could be affected are the next Sienna minivan, Solara sports coupe and Avalon sedan.

Toyota's chief spokesman, Shigeru Hayakawa, declined to comment, saying product-development lead times and the specific timing of product launches are "competitive" information. "It's our basic stance that we introduce products in a timely manner while meeting changing needs of the market," he said. "That general direction remains unchanged."

Toyota's rethinking of its fast-paced new-model strategy comes as the Japanese auto giant's sales around the world, and in the U.S., are increasing rapidly. So is the number of Toyota vehicles being recalled for quality problems.

Last year in the U.S. -- its largest market by volume -- Toyota recalled 2.38 million vehicles, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That's more than the 2.26 million it sold. Overall, the company sold nearly eight million vehicles world-wide.

This year, the company has recalled 628,000 vehicles in the U.S., and people familiar with the matter say it may soon recall an additional half-million vehicles. The latest recall would affect the current generation of the Sienna minivan, because of concern that poorly designed locking devices for rear seats may fail to securely anchor them to the vehicle floor.

Recalls also are on the rise in Japan, Toyota's second-largest market, where police and prosecutors are investigating possible professional negligence for shirking recalls for eight years. Investigators are looking at whether a suspected faulty steering part on the Hilux Surf recreational vehicle may have caused an August 2004 head-on crash that injured five people. The Japanese government has reprimanded the company and called for improved recall practices in the wake of the police probe.

For the most part, Toyota's recalls have involved relatively minor issues and nearly all have been voluntary actions by the company, not the kind in which consumer complaints prod the government into action, says manufacturing guru James Womack, chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute in Cambridge, Mass.

Many analysts say the recent rise in recalls may not cause consumers to avoid Toyota cars at all. Despite the rise in recalls, third-party quality surveys by J.D. Power & Associates and Consumer Reports continue to rank Toyota high in initial and medium-term vehicle quality and reliability.

Still, Toyota has painstakingly built a reputation for superior quality over the past three decades, and the soaring number of recalls has been highly embarrassing for its management. At a news conference last month, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe offered an elaborate apology.

"I take this seriously and see it as a crisis," Mr. Watanabe said. He then bowed deeply in front of the cameras, adding, "I want to apologize deeply for the troubles we have caused."

Though not final, a move to slow product cycles would mark a step back from an aggressive strategy for global expansion set in motion in the mid-1990s by then-President Hiroshi Okuda.

The strategy called for engineers to pump out more vehicles to fuel the company's growth around the world. Product-development bosses kept engineers on tight launch schedules. Toyota also began relying more heavily on computer-aided design tools to radically compress vehicle-development times by skipping steps such as making physical prototypes to test components.

Using these high-tech tools, Toyota cut new-model development time to as short as about two years -- compared with three or four years in the past. According to officials at the Toyota product-development and engineering center in Ann Arbor, Mich., virtual-engineering tools have helped the company slash the number of prototypes it builds per project to fewer than 20 from 60.

But the new approach, which allowed its main advocate Yoshio Shirai, a senior managing director, to gain a seat on Toyota's board, is now suspected of contributing to the recent rash of embarrassing quality glitches.

Additionally, Toyota executives and engineers say, some mistakes are happening because computer-aided engineering tools have limitations that allow potential design flaws to slip through. Others point to increased use of parts designed by outside suppliers like Delphi Corp. that aren't part of the traditional circle of Toyota partners in Japan.

A slowdown would follow a set of actions announced by the company after the Japanese government's reprimand of its recall policies. In a report submitted to the government, Toyota said it would upgrade a new data network for sharing technical information and product-quality reports from customers in order to handle recalls more efficiently. It also will increase staff at its quality-control headquarters.

Earlier this year, Mr. Watanabe named two executive vice presidents -- including Akio Toyoda, a scion of the auto conglomerate's founding family -- as quality chiefs to oversee various initiatives for building more quality into components and vehicle design.

Inside the company, spending more time doing quality-assurance tests on new and redesigned cars under development is seen as vital to in regaining control of quality, say individuals close to the matter.

By delaying introductions of some products, Toyota would conduct more quality checks on components and, in some cases, create more prototypes to make sure thousands of parts and systems that comprise a typical car work as intended and verify their durability, these people say.

Toyota also is accelerating an application of what it describes as "preventive engineering" -- an approach the auto maker has been implementing since the late 1990s to forecast problem areas based on engineering knowledge accumulated over the years and using extra caution in designing those areas.

The approach is based on the idea that most components of today's cars are proven technologies, and that most problems occur when, for example, engineers combine two or more parts to create a component system. Toyota engineers focus most of their attention on those "interface" areas to predict problems that might develop.

Toyota executives and engineers say one factor behind the rise in recalls is the company's recent strategy to use the same components in a wider range of vehicles to save costs. Often when a component is found defective, it is found on not just one or two models but several products sold across the globe -- a factor that explains in part why the number of vehicles affected by a recall often is well more than half a million.

Toyota also has made what one engineer describes as a "clear and conscious change" in the way it handles recalls in the wake of a painful scandal involving an alleged coverup of vehicle defects by Japan's Mitsubishi Motors Corp. a few years ago, which crippled sales and drove Mitsubishi to the brink of collapse.

"We used to do quiet recalls called 'service campaigns' to deal with many defects, but we're not going to hide anything any more," said one senior engineer. "Most of the known defects and issues are now handled through recalls."

Still, the fast pace of new-model launches -- and pressure to keep product launches on schedule -- has given rise to what another senior engineer calls "bonehead" mistakes.

In Japan this year, for instance, Toyota discovered it had made the rear axle of one sport-utility vehicle with the material used for another SUV. Designs for the two rear axles are almost identical, but the metal materials used to produce them are different enough that mixing the parts up caused concern over the strength of the axle. A Toyota spokesman said there was a question of the strength of the axle but declined to elaborate.

Write to Norihiko Shirouzu at norihiko.shirouzu@wsj.com

 

[hooples3]

I like the FJ but I just drove the 4 door wrangler... Id def go with the wrangler. The wrangler has a targa top where even with the hardtop you can take the front portion off. you cant even get a moonroof with the FJ all the electric runs trough the roof

 

[in the trees]

You'll find some FJC in fo here: http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/. But I do think the new Wrangler JK looks real nice as well. I can't wait to be in the market for a truck again and test drive both of them.

toby

 

[N8 v2.0]

i loves me some SEMA FJ's.....

The new Tundra is badass..

 

[N8 v2.0]

blah, blah, blah...

Hey, if syadasti doesn't like it, it must be good!

 

[Konabumm]

Buy a Hummer

 

[N8 v2.0]

Buy a Hummer

Pass.....

 

[Biscuit]

bleh bleh bleh on the barbie wagon..

bleh!

 

[N8 v2.0]

bleh bleh bleh on the barbie wagon..

bleh!

makes your eyes bleed huh?

 

[skinny mike]

the fj's are the new giant suv fad like the hummer was a year or two ago. i thought they were supposed to be small, the things are gigantic and they are everywhere looking as clean as they did on the day they were purchased. i thought it was for off-roading...

 

[Tattooo]

After having my 05 Tacoma for a year, with all the little glitches, I won't be buying any more toyota products. There are major transmission issues on the six speed they still fail to recall, which is about to turn into a fairly large class action.

Moving too fast to grow is killing them.

 

[N8 v2.0]

After having my 05 Tacoma for a year, with all the little glitches, I won't be buying any more toyota products. There are major transmission issues on the six speed they still fail to recall, which is about to turn into a fairly large class action.

Moving too fast to grow is killing them.

Of course the alternative is.....????????

 

[stevew]

give the masses what they want....

 

[N8 v2.0]

give the masses what they want....

 

[Mike B.]

After having my 05 Tacoma for a year, with all the little glitches, I won't be buying any more toyota products. There are major transmission issues on the six speed they still fail to recall, which is about to turn into a fairly large class action.

Moving too fast to grow is killing them.

You never buy the first model year of a new model or a heavily revamped model, regardless of brand.

'02 Tacoma - gas, oil, and tires. I'm on my second set of wiper blades too.

 

[syadasti]

First and second year for some models (which seems like most of the newest generation Toyota). Toyota has a obvious growth problem (publically admitted by their own executives) and until recently was doing silent recalls to make themselves look better than they really were. I think with the new generation you are looking at third year at least to get these design defects ironed out. Last generation was better. FJ seems like a fad design experiment rather than typical practical Toyota vehicle.

 

[dante]

Here is one getting stuck while all the others models do fine

Looks like its driver error on the first pass, got stuck down low. Made it through on his second attempt. Not bad for a fully stock vehicle (looked like it, anyway).

 

[Tattooo]

Truth be told the biggest issue I have had with my truck has been service, then design errors. It shouldn't take six trips and 12 days in the shop to get the drive pulleys replaced properly. The other problem I have is that there are just later proven errors with the engine in paricular. Who puts the main drive pulleys 20" from the ground on a truck? Just not bright.

If it keeps up I am going to see about lemmon laws in the state of purchase. Might have to trade into an F150, and really burn down some fossil fuels.

 

[Biscuit]

If it keeps up I am going to see about lemmon laws in the state of purchase. Might have to trade into an F150, and really burn down some fossil fuels.

Totally random sidenote. If you end up looking at the f150, look at a Titan. I ended up with one (after initially wanting the f150) and couldn't be happier. It's the fastest stock truck that I've ever driven. Handles great, has an awesome stereo. Fit and finish is excellent.

Only issue I had was the brake rotors warped. Which was a recall/warranty thing.

Also, the off-road package comes with a limited slip front diff and an electronic locker in the back. The F150 only has a lsd in the rear. Major selling point for me.