Does Toyota's re-issue of the Land Cruiser 70 in Japan signal that low volume retro vehicles can be built by manufacturers?
Last month, Toyota announced that in order to properly celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Land Cruiser 70 (the heavy duty model), they would be re-issuing the Land Cruiser 70 in Japan, with a limited production run. The Land Cruiser 70 has not been sold there in over 10 years, and for 2014's limited run has been updated with a modern engine and safety features, but retains most of the styling cues of the original.
American companies have been all over the retro-styling trend for a few years now, with the Challenger, Camaro and 2005-2014 Mustang borrowing heavily from their 60's/70's pony car ancestors for their design. Even Toyota got into the retro-style craze with the newer FJ. But those have all been higher volume vehicles. In the Land Cruiser 70's case, Toyota only plans to sell about 200 a year. If this low volume truck is successful, and generates a good amount of media (which it seems to be), is it only a matter of time before other manufacturers follow suit? Plymouth and Chevy tried this idea out in the early 2000's with the Plymouth Prowler and Chevy SSR truck, but those vehicles were not specifically based on a previous model. If they based them on a retro model, I think they could find success. Am I the only one excited about seeing a '70s looking modern Celica? Or a first-gen looking RX-7 with a brand new badass rotary engine? Or a please please please E30 looking M3? Those things won't happen, mostly because designing a new car model is expensive, and if the volume of sales is not expected to be high, it doesn't make much sense, but with Toyota only expecting to sell a few of these babies, maybe it proves that it's not thaaat expensive? (Or maybe Toyota is just crazy and is taking a massive loss on every Land Cruiser 70 re-issue it makes, which is probably the case)
Recent trends like resto-modding and companies like ICON seem to have shown that there is interest, so hopefully manufactures can keep the trend alive. New designs like the 2015 Mustang may signal to some that the retro trend is ending, but I for one would like to see it go on for a little bit longer. Retro styled MR2 anyone?