The Return Road: My Daily Driver

You’ve already heard about my first car, so I figured I’d talk about my daily driver. My vehicle of choice for speedy SoCal is a 1989 Toyota FJ62 Land Cruiser, an awesome Japanese tank of which I demand a ton and that I’ve named “The Land Crusher.” It’s all original (and all there), hypnotically slow, and I love it. It’s moved me out of and back to the SoCal area, hauls furniture, camping gear, gone on road trips, and has a pretty cool origin story.

I’ve owned this truck for four years now and bought it off of the original owner in Bishop, California. As it sits now, it has about 240,000 miles on the clock and the 3F inline-six engine keeps on chugging away. Suspension- and tire-wise, it’s nothing special: 33-inch Dick Cepek Extreme Countries are wrapped around the factory wheels, each corner has an add-a-leaf from ARB and some secondhand Rancho RS9000s, and it has a 1-inch body lift.

In the near future, I have a four-speed manual conversion and some 3-inch shackles planned as well as a roof rack to free up some storage inside when my fiancée and three dogs get off the grid. Though the automatic is nice for traversing obstacles, I love the way these bricks drive with a stick; it’s like driving a road-going tractor. Some other future plans are wheels, a proper set of lifted springs, and some armor, but I have to sell some other projects first.

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