Toyota Prado aims at city-slickers

Tired of opening that heavy barn door to load the groceries into your Toyota Prado and don’t need the mammoth 1875km fuel range afforded by its 63-litre sub-tank?

And do you do so much stop-start suburban driving that your Prado never warms up enough to regenerate its diesel particulate filter (DPF), thus risking DPF clogging and expensive replacement?

If so, Toyota Australia now has the answer, with a DPF ‘forced burn-off’ switch now standard in all Prado models and the option of a top-hinged tailgate – with separately opening glass hatch instead of a full-size spare wheel.

As seen in Europe and on a series of annual special-edition Prado Altitude models -- which date back to 2014 and have proven popular with buyers in urban areas -- the flat tailgate makes your Prado look more like a 200 Series LandCruiser.

More importantly, it’s lighter and therefore easier to operate -- especially when the vehicle is facing downhill -- and the flip-up glass hatch makes accessing the cargo area more convenient.

The only catch is the no-cost factory option requires the spare wheel to be repositioned under the rear floor, where it’s harder to get at and where it replaces the secondary fuel tank.

This reduces total fuel capacity from 150 to 87 litres, although theoretical fuel range remains above 1000km.

Oh, and the spareless tailgate is only available on automatic GXL, VX and Sahara models, so not manual versions of the base GX or popular GXL.

Also new for the Toyota Prado GXL from this month is the $3500 option of leather-accented seat trim, power-operated and ventilated front seats, and seat heating for the first and second rows, as seen in the Prado VX and Sahara.

There are no other changes or price increases for the 2018 Toyota Prado range, which continues to offer a 450Nm (420Nm manual) 2.8-litre turbo-diesel engine, plus seven seats, three-zone climate control, collision warning with pedestrian detection, autonomous emergency braking, active cruise control and lane departure alert.

To July this year, the Toyota Prado has already found more than 10,700 customers (up 8.4 per cent year-on-year), easily maintaining its position as the nation’s most popular large SUV ahead of Toyota’s own Kluger (8800 sales).

In fact, Toyota has sold more than 280,000 examples in Australia since the original ‘Son of LandCruiser’ first arrived in 1996, and Prado has been the best-selling vehicle in its class for eight of the past 10 years.

Sales of the evergreen Toyota Prado have lifted since November last year, when a facelifted 2018 model brought price cuts, more equipment, a new front-end look, higher 3000kg towing capacity and the axing of V6 petrol models.

Toyota Australia vice-president of sales and marketing Sean Hanley said the new tailgate option will make the Prado even more flexible.

"The success of the special-edition models confirmed there was healthy demand for the relocated spare, particularly among buyers who don't necessarily require the extended range offered by the extra fuel tank," said Hanley.