I BOUGHT A THE NEW 250 LANDCRUISER PRADO

Straight into its full potential. I bought a 250 Prado. Hang on, I bought a shopping trolley? I've got a better one. I bought a Land Cruiser 250 Prado. Coming up, why I bought it. Did I order the right version? Let's find out. Fresh information. What I got wrong last time. I assumed it was to do with the battery in here. My first impressions and early dislikes. That's pretty annoying, are you kidding me? And surprises. Why did I buy another vehicle? You're not the only one that's probably thinking that. I want to know how this thing is going to perform across all of this. Does it feel like a Prado? Is it any good off-road? Will it be a good daily vehicle? What will be the worst and best parts about this vehicle? Is it better than the 150 Prado? And speaking of the 150, the 250 has a couple of burdens added to it. And the 250 versus the 300. Will it tow well? Will it tow better than the 70? And how do we tap into this? The 48-volt battery. How will it handle bigger tyres? And how much smaller can we get the wheel, the rim? What is it really like? And will it make a good touring vehicle or travel vehicle? And the only way to really find out and give you the right information, the unbiased stuff, is to go and buy one. This is balls to the wall again and let's see where it goes. I'm just really excited. Another car, another chapter. Will it live up to my high expectations or will it fall short? The journey begins and I invite you to join me in poking and prodding and testing the new LandCruiser 250 Prado. There it is. It's all about to happen. The question is though, is it a GX, a GXL, a VX, an Altitude or a Kakadu? Let's find out. Altitude, of course. I even dressed black and white for this car. It's been a long time waiting for this. A 2.8 litre turbo diesel with the new 48-volt assist. I'll explain what that means later. Eight-speed, automatic, three driving modes, eco, normal and sport. Full leather interior, air-conditioned seats, huge display and a whole bunch of safety features. Thankfully, you can toggle on and off. Choosing the variant of this vehicle so far in advance is definitely a risk. I had no idea what the GXL and the VX look like in the back. Five-seaters. 100% feel I made the right choice, which means I avoided having to deal with this. Wow, that's definitely more than twice the height. It's probably like the seven-seater layout. I'd say almost 250mm. For me, the Altitude was the right choice. And best of all, the Altitude comes with most of the other extras. It's the only one with the rear locker on and it's got sway bar disconnect, which I'll show you very soon how that works. I reckon we take this thing straight off-road. Oh, getting a nice cool on the back. It's pretty hot today. Oh, here we go. This is the second car I've bought from Galleria. I'm almost scared to take it out on the road. As I'm driving out, I don't even know all the features that are in the new 250. I'm in a bloody Prado. We're jumping forward three days and 300 Ks. I was the first one to pick up the vehicle from the Galleria Toyota dealership. Literally, as I was driving out, there was so much more information being released. When I actually took the car and hit the streets, the spec sheets were not even released yet. They're incomplete. There's no departure, approach or ramp over angles on there yet. On these spec sheets, that's just the surface. There's so much more in this car. Which brings me to rectifying some of the stuff that I spoke about in the previous video, which was incorrect. The first thing I want to address that I've got completely wrong. Restriction on 60 kilos. If 60 kilo objects are placed on it, the board could break. My dog weighs 60 kilos. That would mean that she could possibly break the floor. That's a bit of a downer. I assumed it was to do with the battery in here. It's not. It's just this front box. As you'll find in most Prados, groceries. The section I incorrectly stated could only take 60 kilos is this part. So the logic behind how much weight it can take will come down to the seven seater. Flipping the seats over it and having two adults sitting there. One would assume up to 150, maybe 200 kilos. This is the part here that can only take 60 kilos because it could dislodge this section off. And there's another hatch in the back. And that's where all your jack tools are. A bit more storage there. And the jack lives right there. The other part I got completely wrong was the fuel. 87 litres is what I've been stating. It is in fact 110 litres. So there's an 80 litre tank and there's a 30 litre tank. Which explains why my fuel range is 900 and something kilometres. That's pretty impressive. What I don't like though, it now has AdBlue. The added burden and my slight concern is having AdBlue now means that across 7,000 kilometres or 6,000 kilometres, you must fill that tank up again. Otherwise, I'm not actually sure what's going to happen to the vehicle. Some vehicles, they will literally not let you drive because it needs to have AdBlue in it. Should we go to Coles, Woolies, Audi? Nah, take it off-road straight away. Because I live and breathe this stuff, I often forget that many people probably don't know what a sway bar disconnect is or a stability bar disconnect. The sway bar in front of the vehicle helps to keep it nice and stable, but it also restricts you when you're off-road. It doesn't allow for too much flex. Which means wheel travel off-road is generally pretty limited on modern cars. But the Altitude has a sway bar disconnect, which means when you go off-road, you can tell it's a disconnect and you get more flex. I'll explain this a bit more in the off-road video, but this is a first taste of it. So now I've got sway bar disconnect and rear locker on, straight into its full potential. Nothing like getting a brand new vehicle on two wheels, like right here. So even with sway bar disconnect, we're now seesawing. There we go. Yeah, I don't know if that sway bar disconnect really did much. Let's try with the sway bar connected and see if we actually notice a difference. It should be worse. Okay, so no sway bar disconnect. How are we looking? Actually, there is a difference. I definitely feel more tippy. So let's... That 100% makes a difference. Sway bar disconnect, come back, please. You're throwing all my camera gear around. There we go. There's a big difference. I guess, why would you put it in if it didn't make much difference, right? Yeah, look at this. That will be sketchy as without that. That's more flex than a 70 with IFS. It's not hard to get more flex than a 70 though. Just getting it out there for a little bit of a taste and a feel. Yeah, it's all good, but you can't make a conclusive choice on that. So sway bar disconnect, let's try it out on some proper stuff, where I'm actually trying to get from A to B across some rocks, the beach run, the sand dunes, gravel roads, even though we've already done some. We've had the car mostly on the gravel today, three, four hours. Put a gravel at high pressure, it absorbs it quite well. It needs a proper flogging. Speaking of first impressions, what about the engine and the 48-volt system? How does it work? The engine seems to make more of a grunty sound. 48-volt assisted motor. What does that actually mean? Well, in the back of the vehicle, you got that raised section. The battery is under there. Now, this battery is a 48-volt battery that gets powered from the front. This also powers all the accessories through the vehicle on a step down. So why is it 48-volt? It's there to assist the vehicle in the start-stop process. All right, the car turned off when I stopped at this set of lights. There we go, straight away going. And it doesn't burn out your starter motor, but it also gives you a bit of a kick off the start, a bit of a kick off the mark, which means when you put your foot on the accelerator, you go that tiny little bit faster. There's less lag. That's the best way to explain it, but it doesn't give you more power, doesn't give you more torque. I'll cover this way more in another video. How do I feel about the start-stop? When I test drove the Hilux, I persevered with it so I could get the full experience, but now that I've bought this and this is my vehicle, I've got the option to turn it off. I haven't turned it off. It's pretty instant, hey? When I picked this vehicle up, knew it had an eight-speed automatic, and it feels, it seems to be faster than the previous 150 and the Hilux and the 70 that has the 2.8. The interesting thing is it might be an eight-speed, but sixth gear in this vehicle is a one-to-one ratio, which means there's still only two overdrive gears being seven and eight. I'm able to hold eighth gear at 100, and that is sitting just below 1500 RPM. Here's my first annoyance with this car. Only the driver door is unlocked. That's pretty annoying. I just want to get a camera. The other thing I would change is the back door. Are you kidding me? So it must automatically lock again when you're driving. That's the other thing I would change. Can you imagine that? Say 4 a.m. in the morning or you get home at midnight. Good morning, everyone. I'm opening my boots. Good morning, everyone. I'm opening my boots. Good morning, everyone. I'm opening my boots. That's how loud this beep is. I wonder how you can fix that without cutting the wire. Yeah, that. Nah. Oh, you know what? There is this as well. So I guess, unless you need to get something big out, I just found a solution to my problem, actually. I would still stop the beeping, though. That screen is so damn bright. Why can't I adjust it? That's not really cool. I have to pull up to be able to adjust it. Locking out the system so you can't adjust a bright screen is bullshit, man. You're driving. This screen is so frigging bright, you can't see outside the window. So you want to adjust it, but you can't unless you stop and pull over. Safety has basically gone so far beyond, it's unsafe. It just blows my mind. The cool thing about this new LandCruiser Prado, it comes out with 32.5-inch tyres, which means 33-inch tyres are legal, and 34-inch tyres are technically legal in many states and territories. That's pretty cool, which means it's geared for it too. So it might actually be able to run 35s with a bit of massaging, as well as the 76 Series LandCruiser. Time will tell. There's a few LandCruiser tweaks happening here. Did you know that this vehicle shares the same wheelbase as the 80 Series, 100 Series, 105, 200, 300? They all share that same wheelbase. Now in the 250. The other interesting thing is, for the first time, I've noticed on the back, it says LandCruiser Prado, not Prado LandCruiser, like all the previous models. A LandCruiser Prado. Okay, I know they all say LandCruiser Prado. What I'm meaning to say is, it seems like the word LandCruiser is amplified on the 250. Also, it's the first time the Prado has had the T badge. T badge being the Toyota letters on the face of the vehicle. Previous versions used this badge. Being the 150 Prado, the 120 Prado, and the 90. In your mind, is this now worthy of the LandCruiser name? Because clearly, that's what they're trying to do.