Toyota Prado seen here first

...before it is seen by the rest of the world. Even its home market was an hour or two behind the official Sydney unveiling of the newest addition to the off-road arm of Toyota's range.

Toyota's executive sales and marketing director David Buttner says Australia is the fourth-largest market for LandCruiser — behind the Middle East, Europe and China. "It's important because they do the testing here, we always bring vehicles in for accessory fitment, you have to make sure of that, but it's a huge market here, the fourth largest in the world overall, that's pretty significant - we'd be close to the best per capita," he says.

The fourth-generation Prado aims to provide more grunt, with less fuel use. The SUV model has retained a ladder-frame chassis but is aiming at better on-road manners while maintaining the off-road ability for which it is renowned.

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The new model will go on sale in November and is 80mm longer, 10mm wider but 15mm lower than the current model, which was the best-selling SUV in Australia for 2008 and is currently the top-selling medium SUV.

The Japanese car maker said the new Prado's four-litre V6 petrol engine - which makes up just 20 per cent of the car's sales - will get variable valve timing on both inlet and exhaust valves to improve fuel economy, as well as generating 10 per more power.

The company is also boasting of fuel consumption improvments for the more popular turbodiesel engine, with the combined cycle claimed to fall below nine litres per 100km.

Buttner says the company is aiming to retain the off-road ability for the 10 per cent of customers who use it for four-wheel driving and improving its on-road ability. "The off-road capability is really important because that's the heritage of the car, while only 10 per cent might go off-road, they know their spec and they use it.

"It's only 10 per cent but you don't want to go way from that, you still want a rugged SUV while at the same time satisfying the 90 per cent of people looking for ride, comfort and handling of a passenger car - we're confident it can achieve that," he says.

While final specification is still being determined, the new model will get some flow-down features from both the Lexus and LandCruiser side of the company, with the Australian-developed kinetic suspension, off-road ‘crawl’ technology and external cameras likely to be added to a safety features list that will include seven airbags, vehicle stability control and traction control as standard.

The Australian market has so far taken more than 148,000 Prados since it was born from the 70-Series range, but it was the second-generation model that took hold here in the late 1990s.

The medium SUV segment's sales have doubled in the past six years, going from just under 34,000 in 2002 to just over 75,000 last year.