The new Toyota Land Cruiser FJ will be a relative of the Hilux Champ and will debut at the end of the year

It is expected that sales of the SUV will begin in Japan in the spring of 2025, and later the new product will appear in other markets.

The Japanese company has been producing the retro-styled compact SUV Toyota FJ Cruiser since 2006; this SUV left the main market for the model in 2014. Three years later, the FJ Cruiser left the “home” line, and in October 2022, sales in the Middle Eastern market were stopped: we recall that then a thousand cars of the limited edition Final Edition were produced for customers in Saudi Arabia.

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It was reported last year that the Toyota FJ Cruiser will have a successor that will enter the global market. It is assumed that the company showed its first teaser at the end of the presentation of the current Toyota Land Cruiser Prado (in some markets — simply Land Cruiser): then an image of silhouettes of new products appeared on the screen, one of them is a small car with “squared” shapes.

Earlier, the potential name of the future SUV of the Japanese brand became known: in November it became known that Toyota in Japan filed a new trademark application — Land Cruiser FJ. It is possible that this name will be given to the new product, although it is worth mentioning that the presence of an application does not oblige the company to use the registered trademark as a name for any model.

According to the Japanese publication Best Car, the compact SUV Toyota Land Cruiser FJ may debut at the end of this year. The new product will probably go on sale in the home market in the spring of 2025, and will later reach dealers in other countries, including North America. It is expected that here it will compete with the Ford Bronco Sport.

It is expected that the Land Cruiser FJ frame SUV will be based on the same platform that underlies the Toyota Hilux Champ truck, which debuted at the end of November last year. It is the production version of the IMV 0 concept, shown in December 2022. The pickup truck received an independent spring suspension on double wishbones at the front and a dependent spring suspension at the rear; it also has a rack-and-pinion steering mechanism, front wheels with ventilated disc brakes, and the rear wheels are equipped with drum brakes.

In the photo: Toyota Hilux Champ

According to preliminary data, the Land Cruiser FJ will be larger in size than the Toyota Corolla Cross, but probably smaller than the RAV4. It is expected that its length will be approximately 4500 mm, width – 1830 mm, height – 1850 mm, and the distance between the axles can be 2750 mm.

There is no official information about the “filling” yet . According to Best Car, an SUV in Japan may be offered with a traditional gasoline engine; it will probably be a four-cylinder naturally aspirated 2TR-FE with a volume of 2.7 liters, which is included in the Hilux Champ range (in the version for the Thai market), its output is 163 hp. s., and the maximum torque is 246 Nm. By the way, it is possible that outside the home market, the Toyota Land Cruiser FJ will receive a hybrid power plant.