Toyota • Not a Land Cruiser • 2026
Rad Old ToyotasThat Aren’t Land Cruisers
Corollas, Camrys, 4Runners and a Lexus coupe. The Toyotas that never get a buyer’s guide but should.
The Rest of the Family
This blog spends a lot of time on Land Cruisers. Fair enough. But Toyota built plenty of other cars that refuse to die, and Montana is full of them. Some are rare, some are boring on purpose, and all of them are still running when they probably shouldn’t be.
Here are the best non-Land Cruiser Toyotas I photographed this year.
The AE86 Corolla
Yes, a Corolla can be a legend. The two-door Corollas of the mid-1980s kept rear-wheel drive while the four-doors switched to front-wheel drive, and the sporty GT-S version, sold in the U.S. from 1985 to 1987, got the 4A-GE: a 1.6-liter twin-cam four rated at 112 horsepower with a 7,500-rpm redline, according to Consumer Guide.
That doesn’t sound like much. It wasn’t about the number. It was about a light, cheap, rear-drive car that loved to rev, which is why drifters in Japan turned it into a hero and why a clean one is now hard to find. This one showed up at the Roly-Poly Daily Driver Show in Bozeman with the hood open and an owner who clearly knew exactly what he had.
The Red Carpet Camry
At Roly-Poly, somebody rolled out an actual red carpet for a lavender-silver 1990s Camry. I can’t think of a car that deserved it more.
The 1992–1996 Camry is the car Curbside Classic called “the greatest of all time,” and it was overbuilt in ways nobody notices until thirty years later: triple-sealed doors, a quiet cabin and the kind of build quality that makes a 1990s sedan feel solid today. Toyota spent money on this car that it didn’t strictly need to. It shows.
It isn’t fast. It isn’t rare. It’s just still here, and at a daily driver show, that’s the whole point.
The Lexus SC400
Technically a Lexus. Spiritually a Toyota with a tuxedo on. The first-generation SC 400 went on sale in June 1991 as a 1992 model, styled by Toyota’s Calty studio in California and powered by the same 4.0-liter 1UZ-FE V8 as the Lexus LS 400, rated at 250 horsepower at launch, according to Wikipedia. In Japan, it shared its body with the Toyota Soarer.
The white one at Roly-Poly was parked right next to my yellow Honda Beat, which is a fun comparison: one is a rear-drive V8 luxury coupe, the other is a 656cc convertible with the engine behind the seats. Both are Japanese. That’s where the similarities end.
The 4Runners
The first-generation 4Runner, built from 1984 to 1989, was a Toyota pickup with a removable fiberglass top over the bed, according to Toyota. The second generation, from 1990 to 1995, swapped that for a one-piece body and rear doors. Either way, the bones are a Toyota truck, and Toyota trucks don’t quit.
The white first-gen at Roly-Poly had the hood up, a steel bumper and enough lift to look busy. In Moab, a blue second-gen followed a little white truck down the trail like it had done it a hundred times. And at Frost & Furious in West Yellowstone, a 4Runner ran across the frozen runway at sunset, which is the most Montana sentence on this page.
For more first-gens, Bob’s secret Toyota stash has a whole collection.
The Ice Racing Corolla
And then there’s the 1980s Corolla at Frost & Furious, hood up in the snow with a crew standing around it, getting ready to go sideways on a frozen airport. Somebody looked at a commuter car from four decades ago and decided its next career should be ice racing. Correct decision.
If old Corollas are your thing, my patina E70 Corolla post has another one, and the Field Guide to the Montana Shitbox covers the old Toyota pickup in its natural habitat.
Why These Survive
None of these were built to be collectible. The Camry was built to get somebody to work. The Corolla was built to be cheap. The 4Runner was a pickup with a lid. They survived because Toyota built them better than they needed to be, and because Montana lets an old car keep going instead of crushing it the first time the inspection sticker runs out.
If you want the Land Cruiser side of the family, every Land Cruiser generation I photographed this year is the companion to this post. And if one of these Toyotas is yours, Find My Car has every photo I took of it.
Keep them running.
More Toyotas in the Wild
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