You know, ‘cause this thing can clearly cruise more than just land Toyota lovingly called it the MEGA cruiser, in all-caps, no less.
It’s a road-going version of a Japanese ‘Self Defence Force’ offering by Toyota, the kind of vehicle that usually holds anti-tank missiles and anti-air batteries. A ‘limited number’ were sold to puny civillians. Although, with a car displacement taxation system that encourages said civillians to drive kei cars, we strongly doubt there are many out in the wild… rumor has it only 146 were produced.
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Toyota built these from ’95 to ’02 and because humans were going to use it, they had it fitted it out with hilariously mismatched switchgear from other Toyotas.
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Inside you’ll note the cobbled-together dash with dials from a 70-series, A low-range shifter - also from the 70 series beside an automatic gear lever and electronic window controls lifted directly out of a Camry. Vents, dash controls and the rudimentary air conditioning switchgear are lifted from various other Toyotas. Bizarrely for a truck like this, there is no tacho.
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The over-five-metre-long truck packs a 4.1-litre (15B-FTE) four-cylinder turbo-diesel (also borrowed from the Toyota Coaster bus), with an actually kind-of disappointing 112-ish kW and 380Nm of torque.
In a first for a Toyota civilian vehicle, it also includes three locking diffs. You’re probably thinking it’s going to be pretty tough getting around Japan in one of these, but fear not! It also has four-wheel-steer, cutting the turning radius down to an actually-very-impressive 5.6 meters. For… you know, doing a U-turn when you’re chasing the bad-guys. Or you could just drive through or over any buildings in your way.
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Apparently when new the civilian MEGA Cruiser cost almost the equivalent of AU$160,000. A tall order – Hummer H2s cost less than half that in the US. Despite the high price of entry, Toyota still lost money on the civilian editions, but apparently saw a benefit in using them as test-beds for future off-roading tech.
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It’s comes somewhat as a surprise that the military versions weren’t marketed internationally, we have a feeling that the reliability of this mountain of glued-together Toyota bits would be decidedly higher than the Land Rover Defender variants used by the ADF.
Can you get one? Well... while it is said that there is at least one MEGA Cruiser in Australia, the truck does not appear on the Register of Specialist and Enthusiast Vehicles greenlit for import. So good luck bringing one here.
Check out this promo vid of the MEGA Cruiser to get an idea of what it’s capable of.
Would you rather chase bad-guys down in this thing, or a Hummer? Tell us what you think in the comments.
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