Sounds as if you may have asked and answered correctly all at one time. I suspect that Toyota has begun to price themselves out of a very unique market that they created.
While there are many that like this vehicle for it's offroad prowess mixed with the ultimate luxury, you look around at the typical LC Driver (the people who actually buy the vast majority of these vehicles in the US), well, that is just a different person all-together. For those of us that love our Land Cruisers, nothing else will do, but there is some strong, if not better competition out there for the aforementioned crowd. The Infinity QX provides a Lexus "equivalent" to this group for the price of a Land Cruiser. Combine this with the fact that GM has somehow made their Chevrolet/GMC/Cadillac SUV's more popular at a full loaded price of respectively $5k/$12k/$14k less than the Land Cruiser, and that is actual current sales price, not difference in stickers. If you look at the resale of the Current GM Clunkers, it held in there also. If this isn't enough to kill the US Land Cruiser, one of these days, Nissan will wake up and bring their Patrol (The Nissan variant of the Current QX and Nissan's direct competitor to the Land Cruiser) to the US Market, which at Nissan's price point, will indeed finish the job.
Everyone stop your blood from boiling, remember, if Toyota can't make this work for the 99%, they can't make it work for us. Simple "the way it should be versus they way it is." I had been awaiting this latest update before I purchased a new Land Cruiser to replace my 2006 100. However, the new price increase has stepped me back and made me start re-thinking the issues I've had with overpriced keys, dealing with timing belts, persnickety brake jobs, odd sized tires, HP vs. Fuel Mileage, impossible third row seats, etc., and that new 404hp new body style 2014 GMC Yukon XL Denali with powerfold rear seats is starting to look mighty appealing...
