Toyota Landcruiser HDJ 82
On our tour, we drive a Toyota Landcruiser HDJ82. Until today (4 month of travelling in partly extremly rough conditions) we are completely happy with it. Lars, our friend from Denmark has put it into words: "It's just the King of the Off-Road" (He might argue that his J10 has taken over the crown, but on this point, we disagree ;-)
From the very beginning of our journey planning, we knew that we wanted to do our tour with our own car. At that time, we hadn't decided about the itinerary yet, but we knew that we didn't want to be restricted to "nice" and well maintained roads. This limited our choice of cars to off-road capable vehicles.
We started an extensive search, mostly on the internet, about possible vehicles. The choice narrowed quickly down to a few cars:
* Toyota Landcruiser
* Land Rover Defender
* Santana Hanibal
The Land Rover Defender is a very off-road capable vehicle, and in the long version (Defender 110) it is also extremly spacious.
However, it has some serious issues with durability. E.g., the gear shiftbox is not very solid, or the car is not waterproof (as we learned from desillusioned owners). Additionnaly, the supply of spare parts is, especially in Latin Americas and Asia, not always secured, as the Land Rovers are not widely used there.
The Santana Hanibal looks from outside rather similar to the Defender. It comes, however, with a very sturdy turbo diesel engine that is used in the Iveco Transporters. At the time of planning, the car was newly imported to Switzerland, while Germany still waited for the homologation. Therefore, few first hand experience was available. The spare parts supply is not everywhere secured, either.
These reasons, together with the consistently positive feedbacks of long-time owners, made us opt for a Landcruiser, a choice we are extremely happy about.
The best and most complete source of information is, at least in the German speaking world, www.buschtaxi.de. It's an incredibly vast source of information, with very nice and competent people frequenting its forum. I got virtually all necessary information by just asking questions in the forum. (Make sure to use the search function first, as a lot of questions have already been answered.)
From the various Landcruiser models, our final choice was between the J78 and J8 model. Both are extremly though cars, and both have their feverous supporters who invoke sound reasons in favor of their choice. The concept of the J78 is, in certain ways, similar to the Defender 110. It is very spacious and high, but has only two doors. The J8 is a bit shorter, not as high, and comes with 4 doors. It has a more powerful turbo diesel engine than the J78, a better suspension system and is more completely equipped.
When equipping the car for travelling, a pop-top (roof that opens up when used for camping) makes a lot of sense in the case of the spacious J78. The advantage of the pop-top setup is, that you can cook, sit, sleep and drive on without leaving the car. Especially in cooler and rainier areas, this can be very comfortable. However, quite a bit of the total space is taken and can't be used for storage, if you want to avoid to remove the stored articles every time you enter the car. Also, the "civilian" usage of the car (drive to work, give friends a lift etc) becomes rather difficult.
The J8 is in my opinion too small for a pop-top. As its roof can hold 200kg, a roof tent is, however, ideal. When sleeping on the roof, the whole space apart the two front seats remains for storage. The total storage is, thus, not necessarily smaller than in the case of the J78. A roof tent doesn't require to modify the chassis of the car, as in the case of a roof-top. To protect you from the weather, you need, however, an awning with sidewalls, where you can cook and sit in case of rain and wind.
Apart from the usage as an RV, we wanted our car also for everyday use (including a comfortable ride on long highway passages with up to 5 persons).So we opted in favor of the J8. But wanting an J8, in good shape and low mileage, and finding one is not the same...
It took us eight month of systematical searching in Switzerland, Germany, France, Austria and Spain to find our car. And as live goes, it turned out to be a piece of luck: One of our electronic search agents got one morning the message that a J8 was newly announced. Quickly checking the add, I found that the car stood close to the border of Switzerland and Germany, had only 47'000 km and was one of the last J8 that had been built (a HDJ82 from 1998). I asked for a day off, drove there, and after having checked the car, made a reservation. The following weekend, Dana and I got there again, and we bougth it immediately. Sometimes, just be patient ;-)
So we had our car, a HDJ82 VX with 3 Differential Blocks (Middle, Rear, Front),
Standheating and Clima already in. We could start to think how to equip it for our tour, both inside and outside.
