A New Toyota Land Cruiser With No Back Seats Is Either Madness Or Genius

Toyota UK just launched a new Toyota Professional model of the latest Land Cruiser. Think of it as a Land Cruiser cargo van with normal doors and the ability to hold 71 cubic feet of whatever you need. And since it's a Land Cruiser, you can carry your stuff to whatever off-road workplace needs it, be it the farm, the forest, or almost anywhere else.

The Closest The UK Gets To The Genuine Land Cruiser
The latest Land Cruiser is also known as the Land Cruiser Prado in Japan, or the J250 Land Cruiser if you're a serious Cruiser fan. It's not the J70 model you'll see in the more remote parts of the world, helping out anyone who needs to do work in places where the terrain and your competition can be equally hostile. But that doesn't mean it's not capable of real work, as Toyota UK has just shown.

Toyota's UK factory in Burnaston does the conversion work. Once a standard Land Cruiser arrives at the plant, workers take out the back seat and fit steel panels up against the inside of the rear glass. They install a new floor tray that covers all the seat bracket bits, and they add a full-height bulkhead with a window that lets you keep an eye on the cargo in back.

The company calls it a model for business customers who don't want the extra seats with limited capacity in Hilux pickup, which feels like a strange market for it. To us, this Land Cruiser looks perfect for someone who was thinking about a van, but needed four-wheel drive and wanted and a little more style.

Cargo SUVs Are A Uniquely UK Phenomenon
You can only get one engine in the Land Cruiser Commercial, and, of course, it's a diesel. It's a 2.8-liter turbo-four that makes just 201 horsepower, but a beefy 369 pound-feet of torque. Toyota's new hybrid diesel, which it also announced today, will show up down the road.

The Land Cruiser Commercial is just one of the luxury SUVs designed for business owners; a segment that is strangely popular in the UK. Land Rover offers new Defenders and Discovery models that are gutted inside like this, too. There are also smaller ones, including the Suzuki Jimny and Dacia Duster. There are some similarly strange "vans" including the now discontinued Ford Fiesta van and the current Toyota Corolla wagon.

Pricing for the new Land Cruiser Commercial starts from £52,729.17, which is about $71,000. That sounds expensive for a Land Cruiser without any seats, but the standard model starts at £77,845 ($105,000) which makes this one a heck of a bargain – if you want a Land Cruiser without third-row or second-row seating.