Toyota LandCruiser 70 Series ‘Shorty’ ruled out for Oz

Toyota Australia has confirmed the new Toyota 70 Series ‘Shorty’ launched overseas won’t be making an appearance Down Under, despite plenty of interest from local off-road enthusiasts.

Officially released in the United Arab Emirates this week, the new 71 Series two-door debuts with a 4.0-litre petrol V6 that pushes out 170kW of power and 360Nm of torque.

Toyota has announced that some markets will also gain a seven-seat version – for both military and civilian use – that features a removable roof and a middle jump seat up front, plus two side-mounted benches in the rear.

Positioned alongside the regular five-door Toyota LandCruiser 76 Series wagon, the new 71 Series sits on a shorter 2310mm wheelbase that’s a considerable 420mm shorter than the bigger wagon sold Down Under.

Despite obvious local interest in forums and on social media, the 71 Series won’t be released locally, said Toyota Australia vice-president for sales, marketing and franchise operations, Sean Hanley.

“Our product portfolio is complex as it is, and if anything we’d like to try and rationalise our portfolio a little bit in the future rather than add to it,” Hanley explained.

“It doesn’t mean we won’t continue to look at new product offerings – we will – but our LandCruiser model portfolio, with our 300 Series, our Prado, our 70 Series, is pretty complete right now.”

Instead, Toyota Australia this week launched a facelifted 17-variant 70 Series line-up for 2024 complete with both (manual) V8 and (automatic) four-cylinder turbo-diesel power, the latter courtesy of the 2.8-litre diesel borrowed from HiLux and Prado.

However, while the four-cylinder sales commenced nationally this week, the V8 remains unavailable to order until Toyota delivers an overwhelming number of backorders.

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