Toyota Land Cruiser 200 VX Premium (LC200) Review | The Last V8 Land Cruiser #toyotapakistan #lc200v8 #Renowedsuv

            The all-new lc 300 is probably the buy word for a hype car at least these past few months and more than just a couple months from now it will still be the buy word for hype because of the chip shortage and so i found an article online saying that there is a waiting list of four years for the lc300 so what if you can't wait for the lc300 and you want to get the current available land cruiser well you can still buy one of these lc 200 the 200 series of the land cruiser today i'm going to show you around this car and i'm also going to give it a test drive so stay tuned so here in the Pakistan we have two umbrella terms so you can either get local models which are models sold by toyota indus motor Pakistan or you can also get what we call the dubai are basically the gcc spec models but the difference among the two is a story for another time this one right here is a 2017 gen 3 lc 200 vx premium and the easiest way to tell apart a gen 1 or 2 from a gen 3 are these chrome bits that protrudes towards the headlights now you can also facelift our lc200 to make it look like this but stock at least it should look like this

                     Once you got a big imposing grille and a slightly bigger Toyota logo and as with most other land cruisers you do have that recess towards the middle of the hood just so that you can see more stuff out of it when you do off-road down below for this premium model you also get this bumper garnish in chrome with the land cruiser on it just gives it a more solid looking feel from the front to keep it from looking very bland and towards the side, you do only get 18-inch rims you can always upgrade these all the way up to 24 inches but the 18 stock

           Ones are absolutely perfect to maintain great ride quality you also get stickers these decals all across the side of the car for your premium models huge wing mirrors on this one are really useful since this is a huge car step boards not illuminated you also get actual roof racks on top which really do help out for carrying loads at the top of the roof this isn't one of those lifestyle trucks you can actually and really use this car off-road it is incredibly capable the only thing more imposing than seeing an lc 200 from your rearview mirror is seeing the rear of this car because this car at the back just looks so much more imposing and wider than the front of this card and now 

         At the back what you get here is a bunch of chrome including your badges the v8 badge by the way is stuck together it's just one piece for taylor to probably cut a little bit of cost your lights are also pretty big on this one aside from that nothing fancy much there is a built-in reverse camera which is quite useless because it's not exactly the clearest and you also have your reversing sensors which really do help out when you are parking this huge car opening up this tailgate and a lot of the land cruiser aficionados love this about the lc 200 which unfortunately they removed into 300 it's your split tailgate so with this split tailgate you can really lounge back here and you can make this an amazing camera car for when you're doing rolling shots top gear those people and the grand tour that's what they used the land cruiser 200 for when they went to africa because they couldn't really depend on their range rovers now could they back here you don't have a flat floor when you have these down because they do go up to the sides which is kind of annoying but they are kind of easy to put down so you just pull this lever by the side this one folds down and then you have a strap

                                  Which you can pull which raises the backrest lift this one up and you get your own headrest to put this back up it's just a reverse so press this one first strap down and then you have another lever over here you pull and there are actually gas shocks that would automatically bring it up very convenient and now down here there is a hidden storage for your tools while the other side is just empty one main selling point of the toyota land cruiser here in the Pakistan is the engine option that we get while in the united states you can only get this as the land cruiser with a 5.7  and 4.5 liter v8 gasoline engine over here we only get this one engine option this one right here is the 4.5 liter twin turbocharged diesel engine making 232 horsepower and a whopping 615 newton meters of torque now why would people buy this over the lx version well at least here in the Pakistan we do highly value diesel models and they are apparently more reliable and more durable as well and you can get this in diesel but not the lx we could only get the lx570 and so this was the go-to option for pretty much any filipino out there who wanted a big imposing car now chances are if you own a land cruiser at least here in the Pakistan you wouldn't really spend so much time driving it chances are you are a politician or some businessman who can afford a chauffeur now when you do have to drive your land cruiser simply first check the door thud and for a toyota for a japanese car it sounds absolutely good and now we start the car up you get push button start and the steering wheel goes back to its original position together with your seat for toyota standards it is great no doubt about it but for most car standards especially at this price point

                       It simply doesn't cut it because up top yes you get somewhat soft touch materials on each side as well but there's so much bits and pieces in this car that just frankly feels kind of cheap for example this cover right here it feels very flimsy all these fake stainless things they are pretty cheap feeling what i can't complain though is the leather on these seats they may not be pure luxury leather but they really do feel like they will last forever same thing with the steering which is also multi-function and it is also power adjustable together with your memory seats the instrument cluster on this car it is that optotron looking thing which looks very similar to lexus and you also have a screen in the middle this is much better than what you would get with the dubai model so do keep that in mind to the center you have this incredibly horrendous head unit it's so bad i kid you not it's the worst out there this is the same type of head unit that you would get with the toyota alfred but also incredibly similar to what you would get from an ancient toyota in nova you do get a reverse camera with it but it's also pretty much useless you get quad zone climate control thankfully and you also get not just heated but also cooled seats which you also don't get cooled seats with the dubai models this gen 3 gets this improved gated shift area you get a bunch of off-road crawl control your four high and your four low

                   

                             You can lock your center diff you get the ect second which makes the transmission start in second and power which makes it a bit more responsive you get two giant cup holders which you can also move this clip to accommodate slightly smaller cups and you also have this pork over here which you can open it's a door and you can store your phone inside there now what else is in this premium model where you you get a big decently sized sunroof at least for this car it's not the biggest out there and finally there is this uh cool box inside so this isn't one of those uh fake air vent blown thing that doesn't really get that cold like what you would get with the glove box of the toyota fortuner this one it is proper cold some are cool things with this land cruiser right here is that you get an idle up button so when you are warming up the car you just press that then it'll idle a bit tighter and warm your car faster and then up top there is also this regular sun visor with a mirror but you can move it towards the side push it towards the back and then you get another sun visor right here to the left of the steering wheel is another interesting panel so there is the headlamp washer nothing fancy but.

                        There is the race off button what exactly is this button esca means roll-sensing curtain airbags if it detects that your vehicle is about to roll if it's past a particular angle it'll deploy the curtain airbags however we do know that a lot of Arab kids would take these on the big roads of the middle east and do wheelies with the land cruiser if you don't know about that do search it up on youtube they are everywhere and that's also fun when you're off-roading

                              So i guess that's just an additional feature mainly for the kids now there's also the regular uh switch for your side mirror settings but what's cool about it is that as long as you don't have it in the center position you put it on the right or on the left and you put the car into reverse your side mirrors will go down and show you the curb better and it works for both the driver and the passenger side the windows are not only one touch up and down for all four windows but just like lexus cars it's pretty fast but if it's about to get to the end part it slows down and same thing when it's about to go up it'll slow down right there to make it just a little bit more quiet and refined if you are the politician and you are the vip you have to be seated here at the back and now we check the door thread first it sounds exactly the same as the front and finally once you are settled in back here what can you expect as your neighborhood politician well first off headroom is absolutely excellent so is legroom but one thing i absolutely hate about the land cruiser 200 as well aside from that portable head unit is feet room because here's the thing in the lc200 and pretty much any other luxury car you can kind of like stretch out you can like stick your feet under the front seats but for the lc 200 unless you raise those front seats all the way up there's just absolutely no place to stick your feet in so the only way you can relax back here is by slouching like that that way you enjoy your leg room but again feet room isn't there now what can you do back here you can slide these seats forward and backwards for the people at the back to have more room you have your own dual zone climate control back here and heated seats as well they also have air vents over the center as well as on the top but more weird things for the lc200 so Toyota did decide to give you an armrest with two cupholders okay that's fine and standard but first what is this place back here.

                              So it's not even like rubberized so if you put a phone it just really slides all around which can get quite annoying but that's not even the worst part the worst part is this armrest is also pretty much useless i'm not even tall my torso isn't that tall but just look at how low this armrest is so if i want to use this armrest i have to slouch all the way to the side just for me to reach that's how low this thing is alternatively i can really lounge back and slouch like that which would kind of make sense and yeah that's the only way i could use this armrest right here now the best thing about the lc200 or pretty much the land cruiser the full-size one is seating three people abreast because the floor is extremely flat and the car is crazy wide so this is hands down the best car for seating three people at the second row the lc 200 land cruiser is actually a three row suv and not only is it a three row suv but it is an eight seater i'm going to demonstrate how that's gonna be anyway now back here at the third row if I don't ask kindly and the people in the second row have their seats all the way back I only have around an inch or less of legroom which isn't good but if I ask kindly and they do move it forward I'm gonna get around two to three inches.

                    So that is doable legroom is doable what's not doable it's not even your headroom because headroom is also pretty okay it really is just how high this floor is I really have to move my feet all the way up here and I do feel kind of twisted and aside from that what also is pretty odd here is that remember how I said this is an eight-seater so apparently you're supposed to see three people here at the third row and now the question is what about the guy in the middle seat won't he get like whiplash injuries in a crash because he doesn't have his own headrest well actually he does there is a hole for your headrest back here but the question is where is it ah well Taylor thought that they put it behind the backrest of the driver's side third-row seat so there is just this zipper which you unzip and inside is your hidden middle third-row headrest and you just install that by just jamming it into these two holes in the middle for your toys back here you do get your own air vents and you also get two tiny cup holders on either side so now we drive.

                     The last v8 land cruiser in probably forever the land 200 series first and foremost you do get an incredibly commanding position of the road ahead of you to see pretty much everything out of it then around you get pretty big windows as well so visibility is not really hampered this car is actually rather manageable despite its size if there is one issue that you will be facing with this one is that it is quite wide so if you are driving this in rather tighter streets you will have to struggle just a little bit but not to worry because you can easily fold your side mirrors electrically now the main difference of this car with its successor the lc300 at least here for the seats well the seats they are a bit wider so the cabin does feel a little bit more spacious and it will fit people with the larger builds a little bit better than the lc300 however the drawback to that is that the seats are just slightly less supportive all around you it doesn't really hug you that much if you are going for extremely extremely long journeys the lc 300 would be a little bit more comfortable and it won't put as much strain on your body as this one right here you would expect a huge suv to ride pretty bad because well they are off-road oriented but contrary to popular belief actually off-road oriented vehicles tend to ride a little bit better because they do get a little bit floaty so yes handling is pretty much non-existent in this car especially given the size and half of this thing but if you do go over those pretty bad roads that we have here in manila you can almost not feel them i mean sure you're gonna get like thrown around a little bit because of just how floaty it is but it just will not jolt

                            You in any way it's just it's it's comfortable i like it next up is steering feel whereas in the lc300 it uses an electric actuator that turns your hydraulic motor this is your classic hydraulic power steering all the way and does it have half yes can you feel the road under you uh not really it is pretty big but is it like heavy in like a fortunate sense or a high luck sense not at all this one is just quite relaxing to hold it's quite relaxing to turn again it is not as light as the lc300 but pretty much you know for what it is it's actually not bad given the size of this car so this v8 engine right here is probably what a lot of people would say to be the deal breaker or rather the deal maker for the lc 200 compared to its successor because it is the last true dependable unstressed engine and all that especially its gas variant which is naturally aspirated and yes i do understand your sentiments yes it might or it probably would last longer it will be more reliable a little bit more durable in the long term and it is a little bit smoother than the v6 counterpart just because probably it has more cylinders in it it's not as fast as the v6 in the 300 but is it enough if you don't compare it to the 300 absolutely so it is more than enough and when you do hustle it produces a really really great sound that the v6 engine doesn't produce one drawback of this v8 engine would be its abysmal fuel economy figure so in the city I'm doing around four and a half kilometers per liter in pretty bad traffic however when the traffic does clear up just a little bit it easily goes up to around 7.6 kilometers per liter but when you do take this up to the highway you can easily do 10 and a half kilometers per liter although nvh still isn't as great as the lc300 for its age this platform's age race it's already over a decade old.

            I would say that it still is pretty good not only does it track well on the highway it feels very reassuring it feels very stable but the noise that permeates into the cabin aside from tire noise which could be a little bit audible wind noise is actually pretty well subdued brand new a couple of years ago this land cruiser 200 in this premium variant cost around 44.9 million Rupees PKR let's just peg it at 55.8 million however today given that there are a lot of chip shortages and lc300s are around four years in waiting and the hype on that just keeps growing but people still want a land cruiser we use models such as this one right here which by the way is a 2017 year model has actually been going up if it hasn't just remained about steady this one right here could be yours for around Ten million Rupees PKR for similar mileage of 97000 kilometers it simply is the car to get if you just want an extremely reliable durable car that can just last forever and obviously another good thing about that is since it is a land cruiser it will pretty much just hold its value forever so now the question you'll be asking yourself is should i buy an lc 300 now around 8.1 to 8.7 million Rupees Pkr above srp or should i simply go right ahead and buy a land cruiser 200 series well if i were you after having been able to test drive both for a couple of days uh i just don't think it is worth paying that much for those above sop lc 300s right now if i were you i just like wait it out or just go right ahead and buy an lc 200 because the lc 200 right now although it is a little bit aging in some places for the most part it still gives you that land cruiser feel it might be a future classic given that it is the last v8 land cruiser if you do decide to buy one right now since it is a land cruiser.

                         You would be happy to know that it will pretty much hold its value until the point that you can finally sell it and buy yourself an lc 300 at SRP when they do finally arrive in the country Like Pakistan #toyotapakistan #indusmotors #suvintown