2010 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado

Let’s get one thing clear straight away – nothing I or any other journalist says about the 2010 Toyota Prado will have any impact at all on its sales.

There are few cars that are as popular in the Middle East as the current generation 4x4 SUV – just take a look to the right of this page at the ‘Most Read’ stories box and you’ll see that anything we write with the word Prado in is instantly popular. Which is why we’ve written quite a lot for this road test.

This car will sell like hot cakes even if we tell you that it’s awful. Thankfully it isn’t, which means that the good people of the Middle East, who adore the current generation Prado, won’t be disappointed when they upgrade.

DESIGN

At first glance there doesn’t seem to be much exterior difference to the current Prado. Despite huge interest in anything we’ve put up about the 2010 Toyota Prado over the past six months, we didn’t get any interested looks from the public while testing it. The overall impression of the car, its presentation and mood, is very similar to the outgoing model, but look closer and there are some marked differences.

We tried the five-door, seven-seater, top-level VX-L trimmed version, although a three-door version (which also seats seven) is also available, as are several other trims. We’ll be putting together a buyer’s guide shortly, with all the available options, so stay tuned for that.

The new car is wider and longer than its predecessor. There’s a big change at the rear of the 2010 Prado with a large, blister panel over the rear wheels rather than the flared wheel arches on the current model. It looks more rugged than the 2009 version. Gone is the spare wheel from the rear of the car and the rear lights are also different – larger and more simple in their design – red on top, clear on the bottom. The front looks the most fairly similar, thanks to a virtually identical chrome grille, although the bumper is more aggressively styled and the headlights are larger.

The boot is a split-level affair. The main tailgate opens like a door with vertical hinges, while the glass opens independently from horizontal hinges at the top if you just want to quickly chuck something in the back. That’s fine if you’re quite tall but the Prado is a lofty car and if you’re of diminutive stature, you may find that using the hatch is akin to playing basketball.

The interior is very comfortable. It’s lacking flair in terms of design, with a very angular dash full of vertical and horizontal lines. Toyota says this is deliberate to give you a good idea of how off angle you are when off-roading, although we’re not convinced that this is really necessary. It’s not inspiring inside – there’s some ghastly wood-effect trim and too many buttons for my liking, some of which are placed in areas that you can’t even see. When we first drove the Prado I didn’t even realise that the ESC, ride height and suspension settings were there until the passenger pointed them out, as they’re right behind the main bulk of the steering wheel. It’s not great planning – trying to fiddle with buttons while you’re driving will be tricky when they’re out of sight.

Some of the materials are a little scratchy and plasticky to the touch, but it’s all very solid and screwed together with aplomb in the traditional Toyota way.

The third row of seats has been tweaked so that there’s more legroom, with the seats mounted higher. It’s still largely aimed at children, but if you do squeeze any adults back there then their knees won’t be quite so close to their ears as they would have been before. The second row can be folded down flat and raised again electrically, at the flick of a switch.

Our test car also had a powered cool box in the centre console that is very good, especially when out bashing up the desert terrain under a baking sun.

I have some gripes. Various functions such as Multi-terrain Select and the adaptive cruise control are all controlled via a little screen between the rev counter and the speedometer and it’s really fiddly to use. We had the 2010 Prado for two days and by the time we gave it back there were still things that I couldn’t figure out how to do.

The same is true of the air conditioning controls. There’s a separate air-con zone in the back which is great, especially if you have fussy passengers, but it took some fairly concerted playing with the controls to work out how to switch between the different zones. It’s impressive that the car can do all this stuff and that Toyota have included the features, and I’m sure if you buy the car and spend some time with it then you’ll pick it up, but the general interface between human and technology is not as intuitive as it should be.

There are stereo facilities to plug in an auxiliary cable, a USB stick or an iPod through the USB connection and it’ll allow you to access all the iPod track names and so on through the dashboard screen. However, it’s not a great iPod interface – it was quite temperamental when I plugged my iPhone in, firstly telling me that it wasn’t compatible, then changing its mind on the second attempt. Once I did get it working, it seemed to take an annoyingly long time for button presses to register when you want to change a track. It’s great that the feature is there, but we’ve seen the concept better executed in other cars.

The general quality of the sound system is disappointing as well. There are plenty of speakers but the sound is rather tinny with no real depth and all seems to be coming from the windscreen no matter how much you fiddle around with the settings.