LAND CRUISER PRADO 250 SERIES
THE BOLD SUV
Mat Ranasinghe test drives this bold, boxy and rugged SUV that comes with five and seven seat configurations
The Toyota Land Cruiser has been around since 1951; and it’s slowly but surely built a reputation for quality, reliability, capability and value for money. The Prado (as we know it) was developed in 1984 as a subvariant – a short wheelbase light-duty version of the full-size long wheelbase 70 series.
While the luxury biased 60 series evolved into the 80, 100, 200 and now 300 series, the 70 series spawned the J70 Prado, J90, J120, J150 and now the J250. So as one would imagine with a lineage of successful reiterations, the J250 needs to be a revolutionary replacement for the J120 to J150 series.
The new Prado is bold, boxy and rugged. Our first thought as we saw it in conceptual form was from our childhood spent with a Tonka truck! And that we believe is why the 250 series is likely to be the most successful Prado to date.
Some may see it as being inspired by the Geländewagen, Land Rover Discovery, Suzuki Jimny or Hyundai Santa Fe; and they probably did have some influence on the J250, which shares its GA-F platform with the J300 series Land Cruiser.
There are five and seven seat configurations on offer although we didn’t see any sense in making proportions such as those that are restricted to five seats. The interior is well laid out with a tough boxy feel that’s in line with the exterior styling and forms a cohesive package.
It has two 12.3 inch screens, one for the driver’s information and another for an infotainment system. These base models have a lower end driver’s display screen, so it would be wise to do your research and decide whether the additional information is worth the extra money.
Its infotainment system works well and it’s easy to scroll down screens without any lag. Both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are available wirelessly, and make things easy on the move.
There’s also a 360 degree camera system in addition to a low level terrain camera, which was first seen in Land Rover products under the name ClearSight Ground View system. The centre console has a wireless charger, and there’s a small coolbox in-between the two front seats that features heating and cooling.
The seats in the second row don’t feature a sliding function, which means that only shorter passengers or kids can be accommodated in the third row. Safety gear includes front and rear cross traffic alert; blind spot monitoring; and pedestrian, cyclist and obstacle detection.
Our drive took us on some sealed and well maintained B roads, as well as some snow covered off-road tracks. We noticed that the electric power steering, a first in the Prado, helped rather than hindered manoeuvrability – usually, electric power steering tends to detract from the feel of driving.
In a sports car, that would be disastrous because you could be traversing soft snow with jagged stones and rocks below, some of which you won’t see. As a result, you wouldn’t feel the steering forcing its way back and forth like in the previous setup. The high-speed runs were handled with ease, albeit with a fair amount of body roll during cornering. We feel that long cross-country drives would be effortless in the Prado.
So yes, we really enjoyed our time driving it even though it isn’t a particularly exciting or performance oriented motor vehicle. Nevertheless, we’d love to take it on an extended tour… because the Prado will crunch up the kilometres with little effort.
Let us get to the painful part first, which is the price! We see most sellers offering the Prado in the range of Rs. 60-80 million. If your budget can accommodate it, we highly recommend the Land Cruiser Prado J250 as an excellent family transporter, travel companion, people carrier and terrain conqueror.
