Seventies Revival
first published in 4x4 magazine, april 2019
When this Toyota Landcruiser was first modified, around a decade ago, it was perhaps the best of its kind in Britain. It has spent much of the intervening period laid up and forgotten – but now, in the hands of a new owner, it’s once again ready to demonstrate the potential of the rare but brilliant 70-Series
We’ve been watching the modified 4x4 scene here at 4x4 magazine for more years than we care to remember. And in that time, we’ve noticed some patterns emerging.
There are obvious ones. How the heyday of the hybrid Land Rover was brought to an end by the rise of the Defender. And how the rise of the Defender was brought to an end by the rise, and rise, and rise, and rise (etc) of what Defenders are worth if you don’t off-road them.
There have been patterns, or crazes if you want to call them that, which have seen certain vehicles explode in popularity then burn themselves out when the supply of suitable examples for modding dried up. The Suzuki Samurai and Vitara are good examples of this, as are the first-generation Land Rover Discovery and Range Rover.
But there’s another pattern we’ve seen. It’s less obvious but, when you get deep enough into the modding world, very clear. It’s that there’s a noticeable concentration of modified Toyota Landcruisers in Lancashire and Merseyside
– hinterland of West Coast Off-Road, a company which has long specialised in these vehicles.
There are parts of Britain where you can go to a year’s worth of playdays without ever seeing a Landcruiser doing its thing. Head for somewhere like Cowm or Tong, though, and odds-on you’ll lose count of them.
The 70-Series you see here is a fine example of a Landcruiser which, without the benign influence of West Coast Off-Road, might now be pushing up daisies. It entered the off-road world in the hands of a chap called John Abram, who’s friends with West Coast’s main man Paul Lundstrom, and it was Paul who suggested that John needed a Toyota in his life.
Given that John had already had a Suzuki SJ and Jimny, a Jeep CJ5 and a heavily modified Cherokee, you could argue that it was only a matter of time before this happened. He’s a spanner man by trade, so building trucks doesn’t scare him – and neither did the extent of the modifications he resolved to make on his first Landcruiser.
These included the usual big lift and big tyres, winch, snorkel, heavy-duty steel bumpers and so on. But the Landcruiser gained some deep-down engineered modifications, too – one of which is, beyond doubt, the one that makes it stand out in a crowd.
Actually, strictly speaking this doesn’t make the vehicle stand out in a crowd, because it does that simply anyway by dint of being a 70-Series – and also because the really good stuff is hidden away underneath it. By this we’re referring to a pair of axles from the vehicle’s big brother – the mighty 80-Series, marketed in the UK as the Landcruiser VX and assuredly one of the best vehicles ever made.
These axles are monstrously strong. Fitting them on a 70-Series gives it the advantage of massive over-engineering in a critical area – as well as a wider track, disc brakes all-round and, best of all, front and rear diff-locks.
Talking to John at the time, he was full of praise for Paul – in particular his ‘insane ideas.’ We’re sort of assuming the axle conversion was among them – though how he felt about it while actually doing the job is another matter. The front axle went on quite easily, but the rear was a bit of a mission – involving axing the shock and spring mounts off the 70-Series axles and welding them to the new ones, then modifying the panhard rod so the axle would sit centrally.
‘It was one hell of a job,’ John told us. ‘I’m not sure I’d want to repeat it in a hurry!’ But despite this, he admitted that having lockers at his disposal completely changed the way he drove the truck. ‘I used to rely on articulation to get me through, he told us. ‘Now, with diff-locks in both axles, I can pretty much tackle anything, and wheel travel is much less of an issue.’
Be that as it may, one reason why he was talking to us about the 70-Series in the first place was that he had decided to sell it. This duly happened when a punter from London showed up with a plan to use it in big-time competitions.
To get it ready for hardcore action, its new owner took it to... yes, West Coast Off-Road. Here, it was given further essential off-road kit like an interior roll cage, while essential equipment like the winch and suspension was renewed along with critical service stuff such as the suspension bushes, lubricants, cam belt and water pump.
Now it was all set, and away it went for its competitive debut in the legendary Transylvania Trophy. You’re up against some of the best hardcore off-road specials in this event, but the Cruiser made it through unscathed and arrived home in one piece, all ready for more.
But there was to be no more. For reasons we don’t know, having driven to and from Romania and taken on the worst of the country’s terrain in between times, the 70-Series was then squirrelled away in an underground car park – where it spent the next seven years.
We don’t know why its owner at the time did no more with it, nor why he kept it anyway... nor indeed why he finally decided to put it up for sale. But what we do know is that when he did, it soon became the property of its current owner, Steve Carolan – who, by one of those coincidences we’ve come to expect, is a friend of John Abram. It really is a small world, isn’t it?
Steve had the vehicle serviced twice in a fortnight after collecting it, on the basis that having been stood for so long it wouldn’t do any harm to be doubly careful. He had to change the tyres, too, as they had flat spots from being stood for so long – which is a bit of a sob story, because something else West Coast Off- Road did in preparation for that one outing to Transylvania was fit a brand new set of Mickey Thompson Baja Claws.
These days, anyway, the Landcruiser sits on 315/75R16 Cooper Discoverer STT Pros. That’s a good all-round pattern rather than anything hardcore, and as it suggests Steve doesn’t have any intention of taking it back into the competitive arena. Instead, it’s being used as a green laner – which is nothing like as taxing, but it’s being used and that’s what really matters. Because when so much work has gone into creating such a fine truck, it would seem wrong for it not to be out there showing the world how it’s done.
Not that the world was ever in any doubt, of course. But this superb 70-Series, surely one of the very best ever built in the UK, is at last back doing what John Abram built it for. And did we mention that Steve is based in Merseyside? The pattern continues...
