If you were crazy enough to drive 13,000 miles across a number of deserts, mountains, and steppes, you’d probably choose a 1996 Toyota Land Cruiser too, right?
"The Beast" in the shop.
Our car, a white Amazon edition with a 4.4L V8 and countless tens of thousands of miles, is currently getting work done at a shop in Birmingham. Both differentials are being serviced, we’re adding a snorkel for fording rivers, doing an oil change, adding a roof rack for our spare tyres and it’s having a full tear down to pieces to make sure every bit is fit for the trip.
The car has handily also been converted to run on LPG, and with the flip of a switch whilst driving, we can change over from petrol. This adds about 150 miles to our range, and also makes the car much cheaper to run as we pass through Europe, where LPG is considerably cheaper than petrol.
Playing in the snow.
Adding to the fun, our car is right hand drive. The only country where you want RHD is….England, where we start our trip. This means we get to have the fun of driving the next 12,800 miles with the steering wheel on the wrong side! Adding some shall we say, “excitement” to the questionable driving tactics employed by drivers in Iran and other countries, we are expecting some hairy driving.
While definitely not the most economical, we picked it as it gives us the off road abilities we’ll need in places like Mongolia, where there are no paved roads (if you even want to call them roads to begin with) in the western part of the country. It also has the space we need to store all our equipment and even sleep in. Once we complete the rally, we’ll be shipping it back to London, where she’ll continue to do duty on London streets.
Our Car on the lift in the garage in Birmingham.