Toyota LandCruiser Prado 2015 Review

Cast an eye over the SUV market and you’ll see very few truly off-road capable vehicles. One of them is the Toyota LandCruiser Prado, and here we’ve got the most capable Prado of all, the top-shelf Kakadu.

With a few hundred kilometres to get to the start of the off-road tracks of the Victorian High Country, it was time to get reacquainted with the Prado.

The engine is hardly turbine smooth but for a diesel it is more muted than most. It doesn’t clatter and rattle away like a bag of marbles; more like a bag of M&Ms. What is most apparent is that with the beefier power and torque numbers of many of its competitors, Toyota has fallen away from the pack. Overtaking or hill climbing requires a bigger slice of throttle than most other cur-rent SUV wagons. The five-speed transmission is no work of art either; it does its job in a work-man-like manner.

The Kakadu has dropped price since the recent implementation of the Australia-Japan Free Trade Agreement. It is now $84,490, down from $92,120 (plus on-road costs).

That is still a large wedge of money, and while it is cheap when compared to the likes of other du-al-range equipped large SUVs such as the Land Rover Discovery 4 SDV6 HSE at $95,730, it makes the $72,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland 3.0 turbo-diesel seem like a bargain.

While the GU Nissan Patrol isn’t any longer offered in the luxury Ti spec, it is the only other large SUV wagon that is as bush capable.

Before getting to the gnarly tracks in the Victorian High Country, it was a good time to consider the basic artillery every Prado has to tackle the rough stuff.

The Prado has a ladder-frame chassis on which is bolted the body. This means that the chassis rails protect the underbody components against off-road damage and it gives the vehicle a great deal of strength for work such as towing. It also means the body sits higher than a monocoque frame vehicle – so you have to climb up into the cabin or reach higher to store gear in the cargo area – and to stop the body flexing, more metal and more weight goes into making the body rigid.

Even though the Prado 150 Series is much stiffer than the wobbly 90 Series of 1996, once we hit the corrugated dirt you could still feel the steering wheel oscillate slightly – a sign of body flexing. That just doesn’t happen with a monocoque body.

The steering doesn't have any rack rattle at least, and with the rough tracks we encountered in the High Country, if there was any we would have known all about it. You wouldn’t call the Prado’s rack-and-pinion steering pin-sharp by any means, but at least it doesn’t suffer that vague on-centre feel of some SUVs.

Even though the chassis rails are a good start for underbody protection, it isn’t enough. So there are protection plates under the engine and under other vital components such as the fuel tanks.

The Prado has upper- and lower-arm independent coil-spring suspension up front and a five-link coil-spring live-axle setup at the rear. This compromise permits a reasonable turning circle (live front-axle vehicles tend not to have the steering angle that an independent setup has) while affording good rear-axle articulation off-road.

On the corrugations, we saw the first display of this compromise; the rear axle carries a lot of un-sprung weight and once it's asked to cope with a lot of bumps at once – it doesn’t. The skipping around at the rear is contained, but it doesn’t inspire confidence the way the better-planted fully-independent suspension does.

This brings us to the adjustable suspension which is standard in Kakadu. You can dial in one of three modes from Sport to Comfort, but it’s Comfort that seems the best setting for the Kakadu – the others are too firm.

The Kakadu’s Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System (KDSS) suppresses the suspension stroke on-road while softening it for off-road work. The system does a decent job of quelling lean through the fast dirt corners.

Accelerating out of some of these corners, we encountered the first of the Prado’s long list of traction aids in action. The Torsen centre differential apportions torque to the axle that has the better grip. However, without the centre diff locked, that doesn’t mean that wheel spin is banished; the effective traction control kicks in with its whirring and grinding, and grip resumes.

As the High Country tracks gradually constrict, their surfaces more rutted and rock-filled, and the slopes more acute, it was time to select low-range.

The Kakadu’s low-range gearing is not stellar but well within the ballpark for pegging speed. Not so great is the gearshift between first and second gear in low range where the transmission holds first for a bit too long before lurching into second gear.

Multi-Terrain Select (which allows the driver to select from different settings for on-road and off-road driving, similar to Land Rover’s Terrain Response modes) helps on these slow, technical tracks with changes to various settings such as throttle mapping and traction control for specific terrain scenarios.

As the tracks became hollowed-out and steep, it was time to lock the rear differential and try out the Crawl control (which allows the driver to select pre-determined set speeds for off-road driving). Crawl makes an intimidating track look easy. All you have to do is dial in the speed you want, let go of the pedals and steer. It’s a great system and with the excellent live rear-axle articulation, rear diff lock and effective traction control, all that holds the Prado back from being a gun off-roader is its highway-terrain tyres.

The side steps are great for climbing in and out but they will bend all too easily when climbing over rocks.

Even though there is a height-adjustable suspension, it is for the rear only. It would be better to have height adjustment at the front too, where ground clearance deteriorates as the springs com-press.

We didn’t get stuck so never gave the solid front or rear recovery hooks a workout, and also never forded water deep enough to see how the inner-guard sourced air intake held up. In both cases, the Prado has the right gear for the job.

The four-camera Multi-Terrain Monitor (MTM, giving a wide-angle view of the area immediately surrounding the vehicle from the central screen) is good for picking a line on very slow, technical tracks – especially as compared to some, the Prado’s bonnet is hard to see over – but the screen can’t really cope with dappled light all that well.

The LandCruiser Prado Kakadu is a very good off-the-shelf off-roader, with its blend of both traditional and modern off-road equipment. With decent all-terrain or mud-terrain tyres (which nearly all standard SUVs would need) we reckon the Kakadu could go just about anywhere.

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