Let’s say you wanted to take a Toyota off road to a place where no one would ever find you – some real middle-of-nowhere, darkest-depths-of-Mordor stuff. Could you do it in a Corolla All-Trac? Absolutely not. How about one of those new RAV4s, with its 8.6 inches of ground clearance? Ha ha, no. Well, certainly a boxy old Land Cruiser could get you there, right? Something like an FJ60? Mmm, we’re talking way, way off the beaten path here. We’re talking molten rock and orcs up to your eyeballs, so probably not.

What, then? What could possibly get you further afield than a benchmark off-roader like the Land Cruiser? Here’s where the written word fails, and what we really need is the PA guy at a monster truck show to say, in his deepest distorted basso voice:

The Mega Cruiser!

Yes, the Mega Cruiser. 

From 1995 to 2001, Toyota built about 3000 Mega Cruisers as troop carriers and artillery platforms for the Japanese Self-Defense Force. And, just has the American HMMWV, or Humvee, made the leap from military spec to civilian spec as the Hummer, so too did the Mega Cruiser, although just 133 examples were built. In that regard, it’s even rarer than the Toyota 2000GT. 

The 6300-pound rig is powered by a 4.1-litre turbodiesel inline-four making 155bhp and 282lb ft of torque. As a result, it’s not nearly as fast as a 2000GT, but with its 37-inch tyres, triple-locking differentials, 16.5 inches of ground clearance, portal axles, and hydraulic rear-wheel steering for relatively stunning maneuverability, it doesn’t need to be, because it does everything else. 

So, like, where do you get these things? Well, as luck would have it, there’s one for sale at this very moment. Zürich-based online magazine and luxury goods seller Classic Driver is offering this ’96 Mega Cruiser with 80,200km on the clock. It’s one of only seven that were converted to left-hand drive, which is perfect for Mordor’s convoluted network of footpaths. Sold new in Japan, it then spent 14 years in Russia before being sold to the current owner just prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, at which point it seems this Mega Cruiser kind of got lost for a year. Once found, however, it was exported to California, where it was given a $30,000 (£24,000) service that included a differential rebuild, new brakes, new front tie rods, and a refurb of the wiring harness, among other work. 

We don’t see these trade hands very often. In fact, we last reported on one in 2022, when another LHD ’96 sold for $314,500 (£230,000), the rough equivalent of 70 Corolla All-Tracs. Interested parties and those simply looking to get away from it all are encouraged to contact Classic Driver (“Price on request,” it says) for more details.