Wow, what an awful experience you had. I guess it worked out in the end anyway? I am surprised that the Venza is not offered as a plug-in, like I thought it was. I keep missing these things, just like how I didn't realize that the 4Runner was still offered with a 3rd row.
(For your last paragragh)
Haha, amen to that. No credibility with that dude, which is why I didn't even click on it. I am not 100% who it is, but something tells me I already saw the video inadvertently in a YouTube search and emphatically rejected it.
I fully understood what you said, but the prices for the Sequoia TRD Pro threw me off. The Sequoia TRD Pro will definitely be higher than today's 2023MY price of $76k. I had thought you referring to MY 2025 for that one, now that I think about it. The Sequoia is a very important price ceiling, but seeing as how Jeep prices the Wrangler against the Grand Cherokee and Wagoneer/Grand Wagoneer, I think Toyota has flexibility with pricing on the Land Cruiser.
The most important price ceiling is probably the Lexus GX, meaning that the Land Cruiser cannot cost more than that. The GX is becoming more of a halo product, so the higher price can be justified compared to today's more semi-mainstream offering.
Good point about hybrid only for the 4Runner. That's all I hear about that, so "Is it hybrid only?" is a good question.
Well, well stated! I avoided mentioning the Ford brand LOL, because the moving from a unibody FWD basis to RWD unibody basis removed it from being a Highlander competitor in my cases, but they still very much so. Grand Highlander will just takeover the top end of that, I guess?
I made the correlation with the 4Runner/Land Cruiser vs Discovery and Defender, because it's the same relationship. Both 4Runner and Land Cruiser are same architecture, like Discovery and L663 Defender are the same unibody basis.
I worked on the L462 Discovery briefly in 2014 when I was part of JLR and the L66X Defender program was all over the place. I moved to the initial Jaguar XJ redesign effort until I left. Color me disappointed when it was ultimately decided how to approach the Defender and I left the company partly for that reason.
Seeing that Ford was investing in using T6 for the Bronco, I made my way there, working on the BOF basis above it.
I can see that Toyota is taking a similar approach to Land Rover, but instead splitting it across 3 different products in Land Cruiser, 4Runner, and GX. Jeep has done this under 1 brand, between two totally different products.
This is why there is no hardcore Cherokee below the GC, because the Wrangler makes it a hard business case to remake a unibody, solid axle SUV like the XJ Cherokee. When the Wrangler was just a 2-door, that type of Cherokee made sense.
Toyota in 2003 was committed to the 4Runner, in spite of approving the production FJ Cruiser. The FJ Cruiser was a compromised 4-door, unlike the 4G 4Runner and poorly thought out as a long term result.
However, between the GX (Prado), FJC, and Highlander, Japan wanted to discontinue the 4Runner after 2009. Only te Hilux Surf got canceled internationally, since Prado and Fortuner made it redundant. The 4Runner still makes sense as a more GC-like positioned offering to the Wrangler-like Land Cruiser, but in reality I do wonder how that pieces together per what you've stated.
The price, which I am hearing could even go as low as $45k, is still far and away from the most basic Wrangler and Bronco trim levels. The case can be made, that the Land Cruiser nameplate cannot go too low, to still maintain some semblance of past prestige. It's like offering a Lexus below $30k, in today's market I figure.
The GC was Jeep's flagship from 1992 to 2021, when it got superseded by the Wagoneer. From 1992 to 2010, it was solid axles only IIRC. The previous generation GC (WK2), was the first generation to have front & rear independent suspension and debuted the unibody SUV architecture shared by the 2012 Mercedes-Benz M-Class/2016 GLE (W166) and stretched version in the 2011 Durango and 2013 GL/2017 GLS (X166).
MB developed their own new architecture from scratch for MY 2020 in the W167 GLE and X167 GLS, but it was much of a leap in refinement for MB to base their SUVs on the DaimlerChrysler architecture.
The Highlander is not really competition to the GC in my opinion, because of this. Chrysler is missing a midsize FWD crossover, that could fit into that space. They don't want to spend the capital investment, as they do just fine with more profitable RWD vehicles that have a higher price ceiling to work with.
Even as car agnostic most car buyers are, they always have a way of knowing that they don't want to spend more money on a FWD based vehicle, unless it's like Quattro AWD. Something stands out to them, which pushes them away from spending too much on a FWD SUV. MDX and RX seem to be only ones who can trick people into doing so.
I consider Jeep to be marketed today as an American alternative to Land Rover and no longer as mainstream as it used to be. They seem to be getting away with it, by nicer interiors and more technology crammed into the nameplates.
Toyota won't invest in a Land Cruiser subbrand and showroom, so they have no choice but leverage the brand power into higher price brackets. The 300-Series unfortunately couldn't succeed, as long as the Lexus LX was too similar to it. Differentiation of the Land Cruiser vs GX, is key here.
Keep the Land Cruiser more edgy than the GX, is hopefully what happened here. GX is described as "militaristic", being more akin to a G-Wagen. Both must maintain strong degrees of separation, while the 4Runner sits in between both as being more of a mini-Sequoia in positioning and still true to its mission statement, based on the 2nd to 5th gen.
It's why I brought up the Discovery vs Defender. Essentially the same vehicle, but different marketing approaches. RAV4 is more youth and offroad focused, while Venza is for those who don't need the more expensive NX, but favor something softer looking in the car segment. RAV4 went back to its 90s roots essentially.
I feel at Ford, our Explorer Timberline is a competitor to the 4Runner, but outside of that does poorly. The Grand Cherokee all around is a more credible competitor to the 4Runner, even as a unibody, because from AMC to Chrysler to DaimlerChrysler to FCA/Stellantis, it has been treated as a discount Range Rover in mass market form. The Explorer has been much more inconsistent and all over the place.
The 4Runner being on GA-L might have been interesting, but Toyota has never considered it in reality. This is foolish, but it's what they want. That would've been much more sensible, but they'd sooner make a unibody Land Cruiser than bestow such a prestigious task on the "Hilux Surf" (4Runner to us) in their opinion.
The American arm of Toyota gives the 4Runner life at every turn, since Toyota in Japan probably resents it and cannot make sense of its everlasting appeal. Tried to kill it so many times and sales shot through the roof in 2014, so they had no choice but to keep it alive.
Anyway, the new Land Cruiser is going to be slightly bigger than JL Wrangler and T6 Bronco it sounds like, since it will be offered with a 3rd row. I think that's why Toyota is doing it, to offer a reasonably sized offroader, with options you can't get with our Bronco nor "Chrysler's" Wrangler.
If it's a turbo 4-cylinder only, Toyota is likely relying on Hybrid Max and/or something else to make up the power gap.
I hope I gave a relevant response and didn't go too off topic. It's been a funny morning here, that I've lost focus a few times.
