Stuart Saum, manager of Trollhole’s automotive repair shop in Mauldin, knows what it takes to stop a Toyota Land Cruiser.
You drown it.
“I got into Cruisers in Aiken during high school,” he says. “Everybody either had a big Chevy with a V8 or a Jeep. I wanted to be different.” He says he talked his dad into buying a ’77 FJ model. It didn’t end well.
“A Jeep buddy of mine convinced me to drive it across a pond . . . and I sunk it,” he says. “In what is now the Woodside golf course in Aiken.”
You won’t see anything but Land Cruisers at Trollhole’s, where they repair them, restore them, rebuild them. “We’re usually working on about forty at a time,” Saum says. “Nothing but Cruisers.”
For the uninitiated, the Cruiser is much, much more than a world-renowned 4×4. To those who own them, use them, and even build entire subcultures around them (see @upstatecruisers on Instagram), Cruisers represent freedom, mobility, durability, and simplicity.
“I think they’re the best-built vehicle of all time,” Saum says. “I don’t think there’s any other production vehicle that’s built any better than the Toyota Land Cruiser.”
Across town from Trollhole’s, Nicola Morreale, another local enthusiast, stands next to a fully restored FJ45, circa 1981. The vehicle sits on his cousin’s car lot off Whitehorse Road in Greenville. It’s his latest opus, a restoration job that took six months and now sits tucked away like a vintage-blue shrine in a lot full of modern—and, some might say, soulless—vehicles waiting on their next owners.
He talks about how Land Cruisers aren’t just popular among the Upstate 4×4 crowd. They’re loved the world over and they have history.
According to Toyota, they cranked out the first-ever Land Cruiser (the “BJ”) in 1951. Its ancestor? The WWII-era Jeep. Then, 1955 saw the advent of the “FJ” series, which continued until the early ’80s.
Morreale says that in his home country of Venezuela, vintage Cruisers (those made between 1960 and the early ’80s) are part of everyday life. “They use these for daily driving,” he says. “They’re reliable, cheap to repair, and can go 500,000 miles without having to do anything to them.”
But, these days, they’re not cheap to buy. Those interested in a fully restored FJ45 better be ready to slap north of $60,000 on the barrel, Morreale says.
Buyers tend to be in their thirties and forties, and while a restored “40” turns heads, it isn’t about that for most of them. “This is not a collectible. They made a lot of these. People who buy these like to use them, to drive them,” he says. “[Buyers] want one because their father drove one.”
Morreale rebuilt this particular FJ45 from the frame up, adding a Bluetooth sound system, LED headlights, and softer suspension to give it a bit of modern comfort. But the straight-six, 4.2-liter power plant is original. “It’s the original engine—just refurbished. It’s the 2F engine—the most durable engine ever from Toyota,” he says.
And don’t bother worrying with horsepower. In the 4×4 world, it’s all about torque. “They’re really powerful. You won’t get stuck in one of these,” he notes.
Saum expresses it this way: “As they say in Australia, ‘A Land Rover will take you into the Bush, but a Land Cruiser will get you back.’”
Cruiser History
Impress your Cruiser-loving friends with these fun facts
- The first Toyota Land Cruiser (the BJ) rolled off the assembly line in 1951.
- The first FJ came about in 1955 and was the first model to be sold in America.
- The iconic FJ40 series launched in 1960 and made Land Cruiser a global household name.
Photography by Jack Robert Photography.
