Not Easily Bruised

Every year around the November timeframe, Las Vegas, Nevada becomes an automotive mecca for several days. During that time builders, manufacturers, and fabricators all descend upon the local Convention Center for what is arguably one of the most important automotive events of the year: SEMA. The Specialty Equipment Market Association, or SEMA as it is affectionately known, is an opportunity for custom builders and fabricators to showcase new parts, new products, or complete builds on a worldwide stage.

Boasting more than 3,000 automotive based products and over 1,500 completed custom vehicles, SEMA has become a sort of “bragging rights” type of event. Not open to the general public, SEMA is a who’s who of aftermarket parts makers. So, what do you do then when you’re at the big show hocking your wares, and a build rolls in from one of the biggest names in the automotive world; a rig so ludicrous it turns the volume all the way up to 11 and offers no apologies? You start taking down your booth and move on, or you bow down. One of the two.

Literally every major automaker is represented at SEMA, from Ford to Chevrolet to Nissan to Lamborghini, and everything in between. For the 2023 edition of SEMA, none of them had an answer for what Toyota brought to the table. Dubbed FJ Bruiser, Toyota debuted a trail slayer that put everyone else on notice. Actually, it likely took a while for them to pick their jaws up off the ground.

Now this is not new news to anyone who has been paying even the most miniscule amount of attention; it is now long past when Toyota broke the internet (and hurt some feelings) with this absolute unit. But every so often a vehicle is built that is so incredible it needs to be put in the spotlight at varying intervals as a reminder of how high the bar had been set previously. This is that vehicle.

Based on a 1966 Toyota FJ45 pickup truck, Toyota answered the call with big horsepower, big tires, and even bigger motivation. This rig was, after all, built with the express purpose of driving interest towards the all-new Land Cruiser concept that Toyota fans worldwide had already been teased with. And while there’s an obvious age gap between the 1966 “FJ Bruiser” and model year 2024 Land Cruiser 250, the fact that the two vehicles sort of pay homage to each other links them together and makes the SEMA debut of FJ Bruiser that much more meaningful.

For those who don’t know, and for those who do but like seeing the words in front of them, FJ Bruiser has a lot going for it. It has a whole lot. Starting with a fairly rough 1966 Toyota FJ45 pickup, a four-man team built what can only be described as a completely one-off crawler that has to be seen to be believed. Features such as a fully-built 2” rollcage, NASCAR Cup engine producing 725hp and a nasty growl, 42” rubber mounted to 20” Method Race Wheels “304 Double Standard” beadlocked wheels, and even a conveyor belt style “tank tread” under the belly of the rig, FJ Bruiser checks off every box you could think of and even some you hadn’t thought of yet.

Designed and built at Toyota Motorsports Garage in Costa Mesa, California, FJ Bruiser was created as a scratch build; really the only part of the rig that is FJ45 is the skin itself. An all-new custom built tube chassis and roll cage was erected out of 2” steel tubing, and with space being an issue something had to give. That something was the firewall.

Sliding in between the rails of that chassis is a nasty 725hp NASCAR Cup motor mated to a Rancho Drivetrain Engineering 3-Speed tranny and expelling spent exhaust through a Magnaflow system. The project was first nicknamed The Unstoppable FJ, but after all the details of power and drivetrain started to come together, something a bit more…aggressive…was required. FJ Bruiser fit the bill perfectly.

Obviously, the project was never meant to be all show and no go; it turns heads everywhere it goes, and it can go just about anywhere. Currie differentials fore and aft and an Atlas transfer case with four 2WD speeds and four 4WD speeds, FJ Bruiser is the poster child for Toyota’s slogan of “Let’s go places”. This thing might just be able to go places the driver doesn’t actually wish to go.

In the off-chance FJ Bruiser does get itself into a sticky situation and ends up high-centered, it has one trick up its sleeve no one really saw coming: an entire “Tank Tread” conveyor belt, winch driven recovery system based off of a CAMSO snowmobile track. A setup like that almost invites the driver to try and get the rig high-centered. Controlled from inside of the cab, a quick system activation and the tread pretty much drives FJ Bruiser off of the obstruction by itself.

As previously mentioned, this rig was built to be driven and driven hard. Only the best of everything was good enough for this build, and that included the suspension setup. Based around Fox Shocks with Eibach Springs, the trailing arm system creates enough flex to send the 20-by-10 inch Method wheels wrapped in 42 inch BFG Krawler T/A KX tires into the stratosphere. Sand, rock, snow, asphalt…FJ Bruiser was built to tackle all of it.

The team at Toyota Motorsports Garage is not new to crazy builds; their TacoZilla Camper project (to be discussed in a later article) was another mostly scratch built rig that turned heads. So clearly, these guys know what they’re doing, and utilizing an FJ45 build to usher in the new Toyota Land Cruiser 250 was a stroke of genius.