4x4 of the best hidden talents

Some people get into off-roading and head straight for a Land Cruiser, while others come to Toyota after finding their way through one or more other brands. This being Britain, those other brands normally include Land Rover, but John Abram was different. He owned a Suzuki SJ and Jimny, a Jeep CJ5 and a heavily

Words: Paul Looe Pics: Harry Hamm modified Cherokee before taking this 70-Series under his wing.

A spanner man by trade, John wasn’t about to get scared by the prospect of beefing up an ageing truck. And he had plenty that he wanted to do to it, too.

The work included all the usual stuff like a big lift and big tyres, winch, snorkel, steel bumpers and so on. But the Land Cruiser gained some deep-down engineered modifications, too – one of which is, beyond doubt, the one that makes it stand out in a crowd.

Actually, strictly speaking it doesn’t make it stand out in a crowd, because it does that anyway by dint of being a 70-Series – and because the really good stuff is hidden underneath it. By this

It doesn’t look particularly radical at first glance, but this is a 70-Series with a hidden secret – which is that it’s running on a pair of 80-Series axles. These are massively strong, being designed to carry a much larger vehicle with a much larger engine, and as well as having disc brakes at the back, plus bigger rotors up front, they widen the truck’s track and contain locking diffs. Result all round

Above left: The front bumper is a pretty familiar design. Pretty familiar if you spend most of your time in Land Rovers, at least, because that’s what it was made to go on. John cut it down to size and lopped six inches off the front of the chassis to make the room required to fit it. The bumper carries a heavy-duty steering guard, as well as mounting a 9500lb Kingone winch

Above centre: The 70-Series was originally powered by a rather nasty 2.4-litre engine. This was replaced in 1994 by the much, much better 3.0-litre 1-KZT unit, which is what you’re looking at here

Above right: You’d be going some to smack this vehicle against the ground, such is its height and tidy shape. But if it does happen, it’s probably the ground that will come off worse we’re referring to a pair of axles from the vehicle’s big brother – the mighty 80-Series, marketed in the UK as the Land Cruiser VX and assuredly one of the best vehicles ever made.

These axles are monstrously strong. Fitting them on a 70-Series gives it the advantage of massive over-engineering in a critical area – as well as a wider track, disc brakes all-round and, best of all, front and rear diff-locks.

Talking to John at the time, he told us that the front axle went on quite easily but the rear was a bit of a mission – involving axing the shock and spring mounts off the 70-Series axles and welding them to the new ones, then modifying the panhard rod so that the wider axle would sit centrally.

‘It was one hell of a job,’ John told us. ‘I’m not sure I’d want to repeat it in a hurry!’ But despite this, he admitted that having lockers at his disposal completely changed the way he drove the truck. ‘I used to rely on articulation to get me through, he told us. ‘Now, with diff-locks in both axles, I can pretty much tackle anything, and wheel travel is much less of an issue.’

Be that as it may, one reason why he was talking to us about the 70-Series in the first place was that he had decided to sell it. This duly happened when a punter from London showed up with a plan to use it in big-time competitions.

To get it ready for hardcore action, its new owner added an interior roll cage and renewed the winch and suspension as well as critical service stuff such as suspension bushes, lubricants, cam belt and water pump.

Now it was all set, and away it went for its competitive debut in the legendary Transylvania Trophy. You’re up against some of the best hardcore off-road specials in this event, but the Cruiser made it through unscathed and arrived home in one piece, all ready for more.

But there was to be no more. For reasons we don’t know, having driven to and from Romania and taken on the worst of the country’s terrain in between times, the 70-Series was then squirrelled away in an underground car park – where it spent the next seven years.

We don’t know why its owner at the time did no more with it, nor why he kept in anyway… nor indeed why he finally decided to put it up for sale.

But what we do know is that when he did, it soon became the property of Steve Carolan – who, by one of those coincidences we’ve come to expect, is a friend of John Abram. It really is a small world, isn’t it?

Steve had the vehicle serviced twice in a fortnight after collecting it, on the basis that after all this time it wouldn’t do any harm to be doubly careful. He had to change the tyres, too, as they had flat spots from being stood for so long – which is a bit of a sob story, because something else it had gained in preparation for that one outing to Transylvania was a brand new set of Mickey Thompson Baja Claws. Ouch.

These days, the Cruiser sits on 315/75R16 Cooper Discoverer STT Pros. That’s a good allrounder rather than anything hardcore, and as it suggests Steve doesn’t have any intention of taking it back into the competitive arena. Instead, it’s being used as a green laner – nothing like as taxing, but it’s being used and that’s what matters. Because when so much has gone into creating such a fine truck, it would seem wrong for it not to be out there showing the world how it’s done. Not that the world was in any doubt, of course. But this superb 70-Series, surely one of the best in the UK, is at last back doing what John Abram built it for. Time passes, class endures…