If you’re wondering why we don’t talk about our 2013 Toyota FJ Cruiser any more, it’s because we sold it last year to a reader. And what a great car it was. Let’s take a final look at the running costs.
Our Toyota FJ Cruiser is running trouble-free, as we expected it to do. We even took it off-road, where it did phenomenally well (despite the confused thumb gestures by our offroad monkey Vivek “Payero” Menon in the photo above). But it’s currently facing a minor (or major, depending on how you look at it) concerning the exterior trim.
Our manual Toyota FJ Cruiser has been chugging along trouble-free. There’s absolutely nothing to report except the cost of the latest service as well as someone puking in it.
We always knew our Toyota FJ Cruiser would become sought-after one day, just like the original FJ40 it gets its name from. What we didn’t know was that it’d happen so soon.
One of the reasons people buy Toyotas in the UAE, aside from resale value, is that they’re supposedly cheap to maintain. We finally got to put that theory to the test when we went in for dealer service at 10,000 km.
One reason why some people skip the Toyota FJ Cruiser in favour of a 4×4 with four proper doors is that they see the FJ as a car with two doors, with the rear-hinged back doors there only for show. Hence it will make a bad family car. However, we managed to use it as one just fine.
Some loser managed to scrape the front bumper on our Toyota FJ Cruiser while it sat in the parking lot, running away without even leaving a note. Luckily, it looked like our truck left more damage on their car than the other way round.
How does a fuel-tank range of 1000 km sound? It sounds great, especially if you don’t know your car even had that capability. You see, The Toyota FJ Cruiser has been around since 2006, and reached the Middle East in 2008, but it’s always suffered from a pathetic 72-litre fuel tank. However, in 2013, Toyota quietly added an 87-litre secondary tank to the FJ, effectively doubling its petrol capacity to 159 litres.
The first time I drove the Toyota FJ Cruiser, it was late 2007, I was only 6 months out of college, I owned a 1990 junker, this site was still growing, and I was barely getting any invites to automotive media events. Fast-forward to 2014, and I’m married, I own three cars, the site is a successful behemoth…and I’m still barely getting any invites to automotive media events. That’s how long the FJ has been around. But I digress. The Missus just got her driving licence after a month of lessons, and a manual one at that. As with any noob driver,