I drove an $86,000 Toyota Land Cruiser to see if the off-road legend could live up to its incredible reputation

The Toyota Land Cruiser is one of the few SUVs that can genuinely perform double-duty as a semi-luxury suburb-mobile and a serious offroading chariot. You have to look at Land Rovers and Range Rovers, as well as some Jeeps and Mercedes, to achieve a similar package — and even then, the Land Cruiser is arguably the best combination of capability and comfort.

I mean, the Land Cruiser can go from dropping kids off at school to surviving a war zone. It's a very special vehicle.

Obviously, I could complain about the age of the platform. But Toyota is a conservative company and isn't going to mess with products that don't need to be messed with. The Land Cruiser's heyday for US sales was the 1990s, when there weren't that many large SUVs in the landscape. Nowadays, Toyota sells about a thousand a year, and they aren't cheap. So the company makes what I'm guessing is a nice profit margin with essentially zero new investment.

The Land Cruiser doesn't suffer, either. It literally gets the job done, no matter what. Even the infotainment system is acceptable (in the equivalent Lexus, the LX 570, it isn't). The main challenge with the vehicle is its physical size. It's a driveway filler, and if you don't have a huge garage, the fit could be tight. But if you're in the market for a full-size SUV, you've already come to grips with this.

In terms of a comparison, I tend to think of the Land Cruiser as being both more robust and more high-end than the Chevy Suburban, and about on par with the GMC Yukon Denali. The Land Cruiser is considerably more expensive than the Suburban, and as far as distinctions go, you're paying for the Toyota's reputation. On a day-to-day basis, the Chevy is competitive.

I wasn't able to test the Land Cruiser on anything other than paved roads. But to be honest, this SUV doesn't need testing. It's the best big offroader you can find that isn't specifically outfitted for the backcountry.

For normal-life operations, this Toyota shouldn't disappoint. Perhaps the key consideration is cost of ownership. It's fun to have a powerful V8 under the hood, but the pain at the gas pump could get to you after a while. I don't think anyone necessarily needs the Land Cruiser, as they might have a few decades ago, before crossovers were an option.

But if you want a large SUV that can tow plenty, haul anything you could think of, and that's nicely accessorized with some premium touches, the Land Cruiser is a fine choice. And if the apocalypse hits, you'll be covered.