Did I miss this posted somewhere? Great stuff Alan!
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/a...tml?ex=1163566800&en=dd8fea25da50a291&ei=5070
Driving Passions
Their Fans Prefer Them Vintage
By MARC WEINGARTEN
Published: October 25, 2006
WHEN he was just a child, Alan Loshbaugh used to hop on the back of his grandfather’s 1964 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 and ride through the winding roads of the elder Loshbaugh’s Napa Valley vineyards. Chopping firewood, picking grapes for harvest, then hauling everything back in the truck: many of Mr. Loshbaugh’s fondest childhood memories involve a Land Cruiser.
Now he’s a Cruiserhead for life. Currently he owns two 1976 FJ40 jeeps, a 1965 pickup and three station wagons. “I’ll work extra jobs to keep them up,” said Mr. Loshbaugh, a senior video producer for the NBC affiliate in Columbia, Mo. “My wife’s pretty tolerant of it, but thankfully it doesn’t come out of the household budget.”
His passion is also an avocation: for the last two years, Mr. Loshbaugh has been the president of the Toyota Land Cruiser Association. It is the umbrella organization for a network of 45 chapter clubs spread throughout the country, which have a combined 3,960 dues-paying members.
There are car clubs for every conceivable make of European and American automobile, of course. What sets the Land Cruiser group apart is a slavish devotion to a vehicle that, from an engineering and aesthetic standpoint, is kind of like a wallflower at the luxury car cotillion. Association members are proud that they are loyal to a vehicle that has always been more utilitarian than status-worthy.
“My clients call them the antibling cars,” said Jonathan Ward, an association member. Mr. Ward, who owns TLC, a Land Cruiser restoration shop and dealership in Van Nuys, Calif., is considered one of the top Land Cruiser customizers in the country. “There’s a seamlessness to the design, almost a Lego-like, raw simplicity to it. These cars have a direct simple aesthetic. I just love how everything fits together so beautifully. And they’re so durable. We have customers who have put over 250,000 miles on their Cruisers.”
That design template arose from necessity. The first Land Cruisers were manufactured in Japan only a few years after the end of World War II. Using whatever parts they could get their hands on, Toyota’s engineers combined a three-ton truck engine with a passenger car chassis for their Cruiser precursor, the BJ, hoping to sell the vehicles to the United States military during the Korean War.
The Army passed on the trucks, but as the Japanese economy revived, Toyota continued to refine the newly named Land Cruisers. The first ones were imported for the American market in 1958, and the response was underwhelming. At the time, American consumers preferred their own domestic Jeeps and station wagons.
But over the last decade, as vintage utility vehicles have become rugged-chic accessories, the demand for Land Cruisers from the 60’s and 70’s, with their boxy frames and no-frills interiors, has risen. “You’ll see a lot more old Cruisers in L.A. than you used to,” Mr. Ward said. “We have a lot of celebrities among our clientele.”
Renovated Land Cruisers can command as much as $100,000 or more, depending on the modifications. “The great thing about Land Cruisers is that you can get in at any market level,” Mr. Ward said. “You can buy a dead stock car for $1,500, or a renovated car for $150,000.”
Land Cruiser Association members are the kind of people that organize their vacations around their cars. The group has many events around the country year-round. Maintenance parties, where members can go under the hood of each other’s cars and try to fix what ails them, are among the more popular events. The passing on of mechanical knowledge, it seems, is the members’ secret handshake.
Many Land Cruiser fans are aggressively hands-on with their engines, and complain that young mechanics don’t know how to fix them. “The old Land Cruisers in particular have been neglected because mechanics don’t know what they’re looking at,” Mr. Loshbaugh said. “With these maintenance parties, members can walk through procedures for those who don’t have a clue how to tune up their cars.”
There are other events, like car-parts swap meets and “Shine and Show” beauty pageants. But for Sunday off-roaders, the association’s big national events, especially Cruise Moab and Rubithon, provide the most punishing tests of their car’s mettle. Cruise Moab, which takes place among the buttes and sandstone domes of Moab, Utah, is a chance for members to reclaim the image of the 4x4 vehicle as a true road warrior, as opposed to soccer mom status symbol.
For a few days, members live out their most venturesome driving fantasies. Navigating their cars up steep inclines that leave them practically perpendicular to the ground, or across outcroppings that can put the hurt on their wheel axles, these excursions are the X Games of Cruiserhead culture.
Mr. Loshbaugh, who considers himself a cautious driver, recalls one perilous experience during a run at Tuttle Creek in Manhattan, Kan. “I was on a rocky downhill descent and I had to turn at the same time,” he said. “The left tire came into the turn, the right rear tire went into the air, and basically you have to drive into the fall at that point — let off the brakes, step on the gas and shoot down the hill.”
War stories like these are regularly published in the association’s magazine, Toyota Trials. “February saw many of our members risking flash floods to wheel the canyons of Calico,” reads one breathless dispatch from Mark Algazy. “Just try to picture this: going up into a canyon that progressively gets narrower and narrower as the rain starts coming down harder and harder. ... Nuf said!”
For all the hairy-chested off-road adventure, Mr. Loshbaugh is determined to expand the association’s base by appealing to more women and families. “We’re trying to broaden our events schedule,” he said. “You don’t have to take your Cruiser off-road to have fun with it. If someone doesn’t want to break their truck, they don’t have to.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/a...tml?ex=1163566800&en=dd8fea25da50a291&ei=5070
Driving Passions
Their Fans Prefer Them Vintage
By MARC WEINGARTEN
Published: October 25, 2006
WHEN he was just a child, Alan Loshbaugh used to hop on the back of his grandfather’s 1964 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 and ride through the winding roads of the elder Loshbaugh’s Napa Valley vineyards. Chopping firewood, picking grapes for harvest, then hauling everything back in the truck: many of Mr. Loshbaugh’s fondest childhood memories involve a Land Cruiser.
Now he’s a Cruiserhead for life. Currently he owns two 1976 FJ40 jeeps, a 1965 pickup and three station wagons. “I’ll work extra jobs to keep them up,” said Mr. Loshbaugh, a senior video producer for the NBC affiliate in Columbia, Mo. “My wife’s pretty tolerant of it, but thankfully it doesn’t come out of the household budget.”
His passion is also an avocation: for the last two years, Mr. Loshbaugh has been the president of the Toyota Land Cruiser Association. It is the umbrella organization for a network of 45 chapter clubs spread throughout the country, which have a combined 3,960 dues-paying members.
There are car clubs for every conceivable make of European and American automobile, of course. What sets the Land Cruiser group apart is a slavish devotion to a vehicle that, from an engineering and aesthetic standpoint, is kind of like a wallflower at the luxury car cotillion. Association members are proud that they are loyal to a vehicle that has always been more utilitarian than status-worthy.
“My clients call them the antibling cars,” said Jonathan Ward, an association member. Mr. Ward, who owns TLC, a Land Cruiser restoration shop and dealership in Van Nuys, Calif., is considered one of the top Land Cruiser customizers in the country. “There’s a seamlessness to the design, almost a Lego-like, raw simplicity to it. These cars have a direct simple aesthetic. I just love how everything fits together so beautifully. And they’re so durable. We have customers who have put over 250,000 miles on their Cruisers.”
That design template arose from necessity. The first Land Cruisers were manufactured in Japan only a few years after the end of World War II. Using whatever parts they could get their hands on, Toyota’s engineers combined a three-ton truck engine with a passenger car chassis for their Cruiser precursor, the BJ, hoping to sell the vehicles to the United States military during the Korean War.
The Army passed on the trucks, but as the Japanese economy revived, Toyota continued to refine the newly named Land Cruisers. The first ones were imported for the American market in 1958, and the response was underwhelming. At the time, American consumers preferred their own domestic Jeeps and station wagons.
But over the last decade, as vintage utility vehicles have become rugged-chic accessories, the demand for Land Cruisers from the 60’s and 70’s, with their boxy frames and no-frills interiors, has risen. “You’ll see a lot more old Cruisers in L.A. than you used to,” Mr. Ward said. “We have a lot of celebrities among our clientele.”
Renovated Land Cruisers can command as much as $100,000 or more, depending on the modifications. “The great thing about Land Cruisers is that you can get in at any market level,” Mr. Ward said. “You can buy a dead stock car for $1,500, or a renovated car for $150,000.”
Land Cruiser Association members are the kind of people that organize their vacations around their cars. The group has many events around the country year-round. Maintenance parties, where members can go under the hood of each other’s cars and try to fix what ails them, are among the more popular events. The passing on of mechanical knowledge, it seems, is the members’ secret handshake.
Many Land Cruiser fans are aggressively hands-on with their engines, and complain that young mechanics don’t know how to fix them. “The old Land Cruisers in particular have been neglected because mechanics don’t know what they’re looking at,” Mr. Loshbaugh said. “With these maintenance parties, members can walk through procedures for those who don’t have a clue how to tune up their cars.”
There are other events, like car-parts swap meets and “Shine and Show” beauty pageants. But for Sunday off-roaders, the association’s big national events, especially Cruise Moab and Rubithon, provide the most punishing tests of their car’s mettle. Cruise Moab, which takes place among the buttes and sandstone domes of Moab, Utah, is a chance for members to reclaim the image of the 4x4 vehicle as a true road warrior, as opposed to soccer mom status symbol.
For a few days, members live out their most venturesome driving fantasies. Navigating their cars up steep inclines that leave them practically perpendicular to the ground, or across outcroppings that can put the hurt on their wheel axles, these excursions are the X Games of Cruiserhead culture.
Mr. Loshbaugh, who considers himself a cautious driver, recalls one perilous experience during a run at Tuttle Creek in Manhattan, Kan. “I was on a rocky downhill descent and I had to turn at the same time,” he said. “The left tire came into the turn, the right rear tire went into the air, and basically you have to drive into the fall at that point — let off the brakes, step on the gas and shoot down the hill.”
War stories like these are regularly published in the association’s magazine, Toyota Trials. “February saw many of our members risking flash floods to wheel the canyons of Calico,” reads one breathless dispatch from Mark Algazy. “Just try to picture this: going up into a canyon that progressively gets narrower and narrower as the rain starts coming down harder and harder. ... Nuf said!”
For all the hairy-chested off-road adventure, Mr. Loshbaugh is determined to expand the association’s base by appealing to more women and families. “We’re trying to broaden our events schedule,” he said. “You don’t have to take your Cruiser off-road to have fun with it. If someone doesn’t want to break their truck, they don’t have to.”
