NASCAR-powered Land Cruiser proves Toyota sees into America’s soul now

SEMA 2023 has officially kicked into high gear. The aftermarket specialty show, held each fall in Las Vegas, offers automakers the chance to roll out their wildest creations and drum up buzz for new models, aftermarket parts, and much more. The public isn’t allowed inside the convention center, but don’t worry: We’re taking a ton of pictures to share with you.

Though some manufacturers have decided to forgo SEMA this year—looking at you, Stellantis—Toyota is very much not one of them. The Japanese automaker went buck wild with its creations, headlined by this brute: the Toyota “FJ Bruiser,” a properly unhinged machine built by the mad folks at the Toyota Motorsports garage.

Meant to capitalize on the hype surrounding the Land Cruiser nameplate’s return to American shores, Toyota calls the FJ Bruiser “an unstoppable rock-crawling beast that can go virtually anywhere.” That might be the understatement of the year.

The FJ Bruiser is based, ever so loosely, on a 1966 Toyota FJ45 Land Cruiser pickup truck, but pretty much the only things that remain from that workhorse are the body panels. Even a few of those have clearly been modified.

Underneath that vintage skin sits custom … well, everything. Toyota Motorsports engineers fabricated a custom frame, as well as a tube-chassis with a roll cage to protect occupants. The trailing-arm suspension features Fox shocks and Eibach springs that locate Currie solid axles front and rear. The 42-inch BFGoodrich tires are mounted to 20-inch Method beadlock wheels. Articulation is appropriately insane: Fully flexed out, Toyota says that the tires will come nearly halfway up the windshield line.

All that rubber demands a powerplant to match. In place of the wheezy but everlasting straight-six that used to come in these trucks, Toyota sourced a modified version of the 358-cubic-inch V-8 from its NASCAR Cup car. Output rings in at 725 horses, all thundering from a custom MagnaFlow exhaust. A race-built three-speed automatic transmission, built by Rancho Drivetrain Engineering, handles ratio swapping.

An Advanced Adapter Atlas triple-stick transfer case enables the FJ Bruiser to crawl in four different speeds for 2WD and four different speeds for 4WD. To illustrate how wide the ratios are: When in its lowest gear, this thing will crawl along at 12 mph while the engine is screaming at 7000 rpm. In the highest gear, that same 7000-rpm mark will see the vehicle hit speeds of up to 165 mph. Yowza.

Crawlers like this, even the King of the Hammers–type vehicles that inspired the FJ Bruiser, tend to wear winches to drag themselves out of sticky situations. Since this is SEMA, not competition, and Toyota was clearly on an absolute bender, winches were shunned as far too conventional. Should you somehow manage to get the FJ Bruiser stuck, particularly in a high-center situation where an obstacle has basically lifted the machine off the ground, thus preventing any of the four tires from getting traction, there is a tank-like track system—yes, you read that right—that will help this brute scurry off of whatever temporarily halted progress.

SEMA, man.

The CAMSO track system can be operated from inside the cockpit with the push of a button; no need to dismount from the FJ Bruiser. Speaking of the cockpit, engineers went nuts there, too. Custom Momo Daytona seats were fitted, reskinned with plaid fabric as an homage to the FJ’s original bench seat. (Imagine trying to tame this thing from a bench seat!) The steering wheel is a vintage 1968 Jackie Stewart championship steering wheel, because why not.

The FJ Bruiser is one of just a handful of wild creations that Toyota is rolling out at SEMA this year, though we’d absolutely label this thing as the automaker’s wildest. Stay tuned, we’ll cover some of our other favorites in short order.

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