2020 Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Edition: Ultimate Bug-Out Buggy?

My week in the 2020 Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Edition started off with an expensive-sounding, expletive-inciting "crunch" noise. I was merely pulling the pristine flagship Toyota into my garage for safe keeping, proceeding at a yacht-mooring pace when the blood-curdling noise came from overhead. "That ridiculous overlanding roof basket!" I correctly surmised.

It had not occurred to me that a factory-equipped Toyota wouldn't fit in my garage. The spec sheet height of 74 inches suggests 10 inches of clearance. The standard luggage rack adds 3 inches to that and the basket another 6-3/4. My open garage door apparently hung down just far enough to snag the basket's wind deflector. Fortunately, nothing was damaged. But who's going to bust out a ladder to secure gear to the roof-terrace of this two-story SUV? Yakima charges $359 for a Mega Warrior basket exactly like this one on the aftermarket, and we recommend negotiating a line-item veto with your dealer to deduct that amount off the Heritage Edition's $2,330 price premium. Ditching that rack will save 35 pounds and a ton of needless aero drag, wind noise, and garage damage.

For the last two of the Land Cruiser's nine generations, fancy paint jobs, concert-quality stereos, forged BBS wheels, contrast-stitched leather interior trim, and so forth have done much to conceal the model's serious mil-spec roots. But like the Jeep Wrangler, Mercedes G-Wagen, and Land Rover Defender, the Land Cruiser was originally designed for battlefield duty. The first-generation BJ models were ordered from Toyota by Uncle Sam to aid in the Korean conflict. For that reason, it's unfair—or at least incomplete—to judge the Land Cruiser primarily on its size, fuel economy, infotainment system, and its ride quality and dynamic agility on pavement. In all these criteria, the Cruiser suffers in comparison with the current crop of primarily civilian-duty jumbo utes, each of which has been fully renewed (some more than once) since this Land Cruiser's September 2007 start of production (it's been mildly updated a few times since then).

So we ventured 85 miles southwest of Detroit to the private Bundy Hill Off Road recreation park to let the latest Land Cruiser show us what it was designed to do. This former gravel pit's 300-plus acres of trails, bogs, bowls, sand, gravel, and rock step features promise plenty of opportunities to test out what the $86,740 base price buys you before the baskets, heritage badges, and bronze bling goes on.

The feature I was most eager to try out was Off-Road Turn Assist. Less YouTube-friendly than Rivian's "tank turn" or Chevy/GMC's "hurricane turns," it can dramatically shrink the big truck's turn circle on loose surfaces by locking the inside rear wheel. Simply press the Turn Assist button and crank the steering wheel all the way in whichever direction. Our first attempt was on relatively hard-packed gravel, where the unassisted 37.8-foot-diameter curb-to-curb turn circle shrank by 3 feet. But in deep, loose gravel, the locked wheel really sticks and causes the two spinning front wheels to drift around tight enough to cut the original turn circle diameter in half or less. The system makes a loud ABS-actuation type noise when it's working.

Crawl Control serves as an off-road cruise control with five speed settings that range from a toddler-speed creep to 2 mph. I found myself negotiating some of the trickiest maneuvers simply by lifting my foot off the brake and regulating speed via the crawl control dial. When not crawling, this same dial is used for the Multi-Terrain Select system modes, which primarily regulate the amount of allowable wheelslip before the computer steps in to maximize traction as you turn the dial from Mud & Sand (most slip), to Loose Rock, Mogul, Rock & Dirt, and Rock (least slip).

The Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System hydraulically adjusts the stabilizer bars to improve ride on road and to maximize articulation and available grip when the axles are crossed up. But the real traction booster is the lockable Torsen center differential. When climbing the 20-degree rock step feature in Bundy's Coliseum area, I engaged the Rock mode but still got enough wheelslip to allow the rear axle to slide over and almost into contact with a rock that threatened to gouge a bronze BBS wheel. Locking the diff allowed me to advance another foot or two up without wheelslip so that I could reposition the truck to safely avoid the sharp rock.

I managed to engage the Multi-Terrain Monitor, but only after consulting a YouTube video that helped me find the View button, which is completely obscured by the wiper stalk. This engages a forward camera in the grille, two under the mirrors, and one in back for a 360-degree view plus views of each front tire, but low screen resolution and image distortion diminish its usefulness compared with state-of-the-art systems like Land Rover's Transparent Hood.

This Toyota comes pretty well equipped to go anywhere off-road—that is, anywhere it fits. Many trails at Bundy Hill are off limits to vehicles over 60 inches wide, and at 78.0 inches across, this rig is destined to pick up more branch stripes on its flanks than most wherever it goes. Its other limitation is its Dunlop Grandtrek AT23 highway all-season tires. They performed admirably on the dry rock steps but demonstrated limited ability to scale the steeper dirt slopes and prevented us from venturing into any of the more serious mud features. At least they're quiet on the highway.

But with a generous 8.9 inches of ground clearance, abundant skidplate protection, and impressive angles of approach, breakover, and departure (32/24/21 degrees), I worried far less about banging the bottom of the Cruiser than I did the top. Those are specs the Land Cruiser's few current competitors struggle to meet. The Nissan Armada Platinum Reserve and Ford Expedition Platinum boast more ground clearance (9.2 and 9.8 inches, respectively), and the outgoing GMC Yukon Denali and the Armada eke out a bit more departure angle (23 and 22 degrees). The forthcoming 2021 Chevy Tahoe/GMC Yukon, with its height-adjustable suspension is claiming a 32-degree maximum approach angle (at least in Yukon AT4 trim), but the rest of its stats have yet to be announced.

There's nothing exactly like a Toyota Land Cruiser. The global Nissan Patrol has a similar mil-spec background, and the North American Armada now shares most of its underpinnings (and Japanese assembly) with the global vehicle. It's larger inside and out, and if you plan to use the third-row seat, the Armada's is better (the base Land Cruiser's third-row seats fold up against the side windows—they're deleted from the Heritage Edition, freeing up valuable cargo space). The Nissan can carry and tow a bit more weight, and its 1-mpg highway fuel economy advantage and 1.4-gallon-larger fuel tank promise better highway range. It also shares way less off-road capability with its mil-spec forebears than the Land Cruiser does, but it costs $16,520 less than this one with every option box checked. Of course, you can close that gap by starting with the Armada-based Infiniti QX80, but it competes with the Land Cruiser-based Lexus LX570.

Load a Ford Expedition Platinum up with everything, and you'll end up $5,930 shy of this Toyota and get a twin-turbo V-6 that's 69 lb-ft torquier than Toyota's V-8. The Ford is also a larger, roomier truck that can carry and tow more pounds than the Toyota. GM's new breed of full-size utes is just coming out and will also have the Land Cruiser outclassed in terms of top-spec performance, interior space, modern conveniences, and infotainment gear. On price, the GMC Yukon Denali will probably come closest to our Midnight Black beauty, while a loaded Yukon AT4 might come closer to matching the Toyota's off-road capability at a lower price point.

But if you're looking for the ultimate bug-out buggy to take you as far away from the grid as possible with that rooftop basket fully stocked with jerry cans, MREs, and survival gear, we're pretty sure the Land Cruiser still seems like the jumbo-ute best suited to the task.