Hello, and welcome. My name is Nick Spitzer and I've been one of those "LandCruiser guys" for a while now. I'm also interested in travel and other cultures, and one day I ended up Costa Rica surrounded by a ton of neat diesel LandCruisers. I guarantee if you've ever been to Costa Rica you've seen a couple of these! These days I hand-pick the nice ones, upgrade/restore/modify them to my satisfaction, and sell them.

My LandCruiser Standards

I simply can't sell something in which I don't have confidence. There is some rather interesting service performed on these Cruisers in Central America... sometimes it's not exactly what I'd call perfect. I simply can't let things like that go and try to sell it as a dependable vehicle. I take my time (sometimes too much, really) to make sure people who buy LandCruisers from me are buying a ready-to-drive vehicle. With recent paperwork revolutions, I am pleased to share that all Cruisers will now sell with a clean Georgia title! In the past I've had to deal with this on a state-by-state basis and, believe me, it has been less than optimal.

The Cruisers

The LandCruisers themselves are pretty wild, and certainly unique on this hemisphere:

They are not fast, and top out around 65mph. These are older vehicles that are completely different than a newer LandCruiser. That's my disclaimer!

They have a rather efficient, slightly underpowered 4 cylinder 3.0 liter "1B" diesel motor. I usually see around 25mpg.

The doors are unique with a front "wing vent" window that flips open, in addition to the rectangular window. We had these vents in the U.S. with Cruisers until 1974, but we never had them with the newer (and far superior) door handle/lock setup.

The transmissions are 4-speeds with the non-USA 4.9521:1 first gear ratio. The overall 4wd system is the same as U.S. cruisers with front locking hubs and a near 2:1 low-ratio in the transfer case.

Until 1982 they had front drum brakes, but wider than we ever saw here (in the U.S. and Canada drum brakes were replaced by disc brakes in 1976). I usually find some sort of (at least front) disc brake solution before I sell them, as the maintenance needed for front drum brakes is pretty unreasonable/unacceptable.