Flex Automotive is about to take America by storm! At least, that’s surely what they think. With a successful dealership network on their native Japan, they have decided to set their sights stateside and bring their particular brand of Japanese retro-kits. And I am all for it.
Which is surprising, because I hate it when boomers do it.
See the problem with these “Graft retro design cues to a modern vehicle” business has been the same since that was a business model. Because the modern car is designed with the design language at the time, and generally you are limited to swapping body and badges, creating a side profile that looks exactly like what it is.
The prime example of this is the many many revivals of the Studebaker Avanti. A neat little coupe that tried and failed to save Studebaker back in 1963 that went through a decent revival followed by a series of questionable ones that ended on the thing you see above this paragraph. Which, in case you are not as pedantic as your writer for this article, is a Ford mustang with some Avanti styling nods grafted on.
So it was for the Firebird revival and The Dusemberg revival and any number of questionable attempts to capture the barest hint of a glamorous past on the present. Or at least, capture it in the most cost-effective way possible.
Japan adores its retro though. Mitsuoka has has a sustainable business model in there for decades, after all, which means they have a much higher tolerance for it. And Flex themselves have a selection of kits for vehicles where such modifications will always work, like the Hiace and Probox, mostly because there’s only so many ways in which you can add some flair to a utilitarian box and it lends itself to them much like a canvas does. But with the Land Cruisers you’re back at the previous conundrum. It just looks like a newer land cruiser to which someone has bolted the front end of an older one. And they did a really good job of it but you can’t help wonder why.
Naturally, we have reached the part of the article where the writer has to button up and present their ultimate theses starting with the phrase “and yet”, so here goes. And yet…
I can’t bring myself to really dislike this. Maybe it’s because I lived when both the donor and the inspiration vehicle existed, maybe it’s because they’re Toyotas and therefore never really went away. But whatever the reason, even when the parts clearly don’t match, the end result ends up being surprisingly charming. Especially for something the size of a small moon and whose Outback-conquering off-road capabilities are mostly used for ferrying around kids to child therapy sessions.
So if you want to have your LandCruiser done in the traditional Japanese way, send it to San Diego with a check for twenty grands or so and wait. Me? I’ll wait for the reported Tacoma enhancements to make it look like one of the older pickup trucks. What with Toyota themselves teasing me with the idea seven years back and never committing.
