This is one of the most important decisions for this trip – and I made it years ago.
It started with a trip to Utah. I was a sports car guy, but something on that trip stirred something
deep within me. I needed to get back into the outdoors. Hiking, offroading, overlanding.
This led me to Tatsu, the rig that started this journey before I knew it. Tatsumaru. A Japanese rig needed a Japanese name and I’m a nerd so I had a ton going through my mind (my Tenchu videogame nerds are smiling). In short, “Tatsu” means dragon – a worthy moniker for a strong truck responsible for protecting us on every journey.
Before there was a trailer, before there was a plan, before any of this had a name – there was
Utah.
It was 2021. I spent a long week out there. Flew out, grabbed a rental car, and then proceeded
to hike Moab, Bryce Canyon, Zion – the usual spots. The kind of landscapes that don’t let you be
passive. You can’t scroll through them. You have to sit in them and feel a little small, which is an
underrated experience for someone who spent most of his adult life optimizing for the opposite.
I came home with one clear thought: I need to be able to go back to places like that. On my own
terms. Under my own power. And I need to feel comfortable doing it.
The problem was I had exactly the wrong cars for it.
I’ve been a German car guy my whole life. At one point – and I say this with equal parts pride
and self-awareness – my garage included a 1993 VW Corrado, a 2016 Golf R, a 2001 Audi S4
Avant, and a 1994 Audi S4. All at the same time. The problem was they all sort of scratched the
same specific itch. Precision. A little mechanical drama. The feeling that the car had a
personality, if not a slightly toxic one.
Utah broke something loose. Because no amount of driving pleasure fills the gap when you’re
staring at a dirt road and your car is wearing low profile dress shoes.
So I started researching. Obsessively. The way I do everything.
Pathfinder? Xterra? Tacoma? Jeep – that one seemed popular and plenty of my friends had
them. But nearly every serious overlanding article I found kept arriving at the same conclusion.
“Get a Land Cruiser. Full stop. This article could end here”
One comment that stuck with me (an Australian, naturally) put it this way: “Want to explore the
outback? Get a Range Rover. Want to come back? Get a Land Cruiser.”
Fine. Land Cruiser. Decision made. Sort of. But now which one?
This is where the rabbit hole gets real. There’s the FJ60, the 80, the 100, the 200. Each
generation is a different argument about what a truck should be.
I crossed the FJ60 off first. Too old and a little too antiquated for long-range reliability on the
kind of trips I was imagining which, admittedly, are 80% highway driving. The 200 series came
off next – too new, too expensive at the time, and honestly a little too posh. It had started to
become something else. A luxury SUV wearing a Land Cruiser badge.
That left the 80 and the 100. And I’ll be honest: I love the look of the 80. There’s a reason
people lose their minds over it. But love and practicality are different conversations. The 100 series – and its Lexus sibling, the LX470 – wins on almost every other axis. Bigger. Better transmission. More refined engine. Better highway manners. More comfortable on long hauls without giving up the capability that matters. The 80 would be better for serious off-roading with it’s solid axles, but the trade was worth it for what I was building toward.
The 100 was the answer.
So I started looking with a slight preference for the “Land Cruiser” badge for no other reason than recognition. There’s no real reason to pick the Land Cruiser over the LX470, but there is a cool factor to it. The LX470 won. Same platform, Lexus refinement and typically priced below equivalent Land Cruisers because fewer people knew what they were looking at.
That last part mattered more than I expected.
I found her in Atlanta. A 2004 LX470. One owner. 228,000 miles, completely OEM. California
truck – no rust, not a fleck of it. Flew in, took an Uber to the dealer. She wasn’t “perfect”. Stained rear carpet. Worn steering wheel. A scrape on the bumper they hadn’t bothered to mention. But, nonetheless, the dealer had bought her at auction and clearly didn’t understand what they had. I know this because sitting right next to her – literally adjacent in the lot – was a white 100 series Toyota Land Cruiser, rusted badly, and they were asking $21,000 for it. I paid $14,000 cash for the LX.
The mileage gave some people pause. I didn’t blink. Everything I’d read made the same point:
with these trucks, rust, abuse, and maintenance history matter. Mileage is almost a distraction.
One owner for sixteen years means one person’s habits, one maintenance philosophy, one set
of hands on the wheel. That’s a known quantity. That’s actually a good thing.
I sold the Corrado. Drove Tatsu home to Nashville. Never looked back. With all the crazy
vehicles I’ve owned (and that includes a Porsche 911), my favorite vehicle I’ve ever owned is
this truck…
I’ve taken her off-road. I’ve used her for long road trips. She’s been reliable in the way that only
vehicles with a real reputation for it can be – quietly, without drama, exactly when it counted.
And now she’s going to be responsible for this trip with all my loved ones. Probably 10K+ miles,
living on the road, towing a trailer – for a year.
Near the tail end of the journey, she will see Utah. The place that cracked open the idea that
there was a different way to live on the road. She’s going to see it. And I think that matters, even
if only to me.
This trip won’t start when we hitch the trailer. It started in 2021 on a red rock overlook
somewhere outside Moab, when I looked at a dirt road and decided I needed to be able to go
down it.
Tatsu is how I got there. The rest is what happens next.