The Ancient Toyota Land Cruiser 70 Gets a Manual Gearbox

2025 is almost here, but today, we’re talking about how Toyota is giving the Land Cruiser a five-speed manual gearbox. Yes, five. As you can tell from the images, it’s not the J300 Series sold in certain markets or the J250 Series we get here in the United States. To trace this SUV’s origins, we must go back to 1984. That’s two years before yours truly was even born. The ancient J70 Series gets an update for 2025, four decades after its launch.

Despite losing the V-8 engine earlier this year due to “changing regulations and community expectations,” the J70 keeps on truckin’ in Australia. When it died, the 4.5-liter diesel took away with it the manual gearbox. Now, the three-pedal setup is back, in conjunction with the smaller 2.8-liter four-pot. It, too, is a diesel, rated at 201 horsepower and 332 pound-feet (450 Newton-meters) of torque.

Even though it has four fewer cylinders, the smaller diesel has just about the same horsepower and an extra 15 lb-ft (20 Nm). Toyota still offers the J70 in Australia with a six-speed automatic, in which case torque rises to 442 lb-ft (500 Nm). Opting for the auto brings the full torque much sooner, at 1,600 rpm vs 2,400 rpm when the manual is selected. The stick shift does have unique gear ratios and beefier hardware to take the abuse a Land Cruiser is used to.

The manual has shorter first through third gears to improve performance off the line and a longer fifth to aid fuel efficiency and lower engine noise at higher speeds. Toyota also installed a new flywheel but had to remove the front console box to make room for the manual gear shifter. The downhill assist control also had to be sacrificed for the old-school Land Cruiser.

The cheapest Land Cruiser J70 with a manual transmission costs the equivalent of $50,000 in the Land Down Under. However, Australia isn’t the only country where Toyota still sells the 40-year-old SUV. It’s also offered at home in Japan, complete with a fender-mounted mirror. A short-wheelbase, two-door model is available in the United Arab Emirates.

Although this generation of the Land Cruiser has been updated throughout the years, it’s still a J70. To our knowledge, that makes it the second-oldest vehicle still in production, after the Lada Niva. The latter initially came out in 1977, seven years before the 70 Series.