Our chariot is the 70 series Land Cruiser, which shares the crown for the ultimate Africa Vehicle with a Land Rover. The Land Rover of course has it’s merits, but for us the Land Cruiser 70 series is where it’s at.
The 4.2 liter diesel engine remains largely unchanged since it was brought into service in 1990. The inline 6 generates an underwhelming 129 hp, it has no computers under the hood, it’s under powered, slow, and it’s been said that it’s shudder on shutdown will register on the Richter scale. But it is also dirt simple, faithfully reliable, parts are widely available and mechanics the across the continent are familiar with it.
It’s unimpressive speed is hardly an issue when on dirt roads, as one can’t drive that fast anyway, and even on tarmac many of the roads in Africa don’t allow for much speed either due to poor road condition, steep inclines and or optimistically sharp corners. Particularly when loaded one must plan overtaking far ahead of time, and you can forget about passing someone while going uphill, it’s just not going to happen.
To illustrate, on a particularly empty stretch of pretty flat road in South Africa we thought we’d test our 0-60mph time. So Jenny stopped in the middle of the road, I got the stop watch ready and on the “3, 2, 1, Mark!” she was off…slowly. The manual says 0-60mph in 30 seconds. Not much to write home about to begin with, and that is unloaded. We were in full overland configuration and at 30 seconds I was starting to laugh as the Cruiser gently trundled faster every so slowly gaining speed. Jenny wound up the revs, mashed through the gears and at 60 seconds I was starting to lose it, marveling at our spectacular slowness. We made it up to the big 60mph in….90 seconds. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t tell Jenny how bad it was. But to the Cruiser’s credit I think there might have been a slight incline, and it’s also possible that Jenny could’ve been more aggressive on the revs and the gear changes, but it’s hard to thrash your new to you engine. Or maybe it was the altitude? Yeah…that’s it. The altitude.
The 70 series is made in many configurations. We have the 79 double cab pickup. 4 wheel drive, low range gear box, front and rear diff locks, long range (130 liter) fuel tank. It’s also fitted with a snorkel, not just for those more-daring-than-we-should-be water crossings but also to move the air intake higher off the road, which reduces the amount of dust being sucked into the air filter. An awning to provide shade in the sun and keep us a bit dryer in rain. 2 full size spare wheels, high lift jack, spade, air compressor, tool kit, first aid kit, 12v fridge, recovery kit, gas cooker and many more accouterments.
The goal of all these numerous extras is to turn the vehicle from a capable 4×4 into something that we will also want to live out of for the duration of our trip. More details about the vehicle setup in future posts.
