Land Cruiser • FJ40 • 2026
The FJ40sof 2026
The FJ40s I photographed this year, from Bozeman’s Main Street to a Beartooth lake to a ledge in Moab. None of them were sitting still.
The Truck I Can’t Stop Photographing
I have a problem, and the problem is shaped like an FJ40. Every time one rolls into a parking lot or onto a trail, my camera finds it. It’s a disease. There’s even a page on this site where I’m openly begging for money to buy one so I can wheel the Rubicon in 2027.
Toyota built the 40 Series from 1960 to 1984, according to Expedition Portal. That means the newest one is now more than forty years old, and they still show up everywhere: car shows, club runs, slickrock. This year I photographed them in Bozeman, on the way to Goose Lake near Cooke City and in Moab. Here are the best of them.
The Prospector, Goose Lake
The best FJ40 of my year was the blue-and-white 1971 known as the Prospector. It made the 406 Cruisers run to Goose Lake in the Beartooths with the youngest driver in the club behind the wheel, a 16-year-old. I told the rest of that story in Moose, Meteor Showers and a 16-Year-Old in an FJ40.
What I’ll add here is just how good that truck looks in that country. Short wheelbase, big rocks, alpine lake, no drama. Fifty-five years old and it went everywhere the newer trucks went.
Main Street, Bozeman
At Cruisin’ on Main in Bozeman, two FJ40s parked among the hot rods and chrome like they had wandered in from a trailhead. One wore green paint with a camouflage pattern on the sides. The other was tan, clean and sitting on beefy tires, parked next to a 1930s Chevy coupe that looked like it had never seen dirt in its life.
That’s the beauty of an FJ40. It fits at a car show and it fits at a trailhead, and it looks a little smug in both places.
Moab, Where They Go to Show Off
Cruise Moab is the Land Cruiser equivalent of a family reunion in the desert, and the 40s came to work. On the 3D Trail, a teal FJ40 with a white top picked its way across the slickrock, and a gray FJ40 with a spare tire on the back door walked up a ledge one tire at a time while the rest of us held our breath.
I shot that gray one all the way up. It never looked worried. I did.
Virginia City, Briefly
One more made a cameo. During the Vigilante 77 Rally in Virginia City, a blue FJ40 sat parked on the old main street while a 1957 Chevy wagon rolled past. It wasn’t the star of the shot, but an FJ40 in an old mining town is never really a background character.
Why the FJ40 Still Wins
On paper, the FJ40 should have lost this fight decades ago. Newer trucks are faster, quieter, safer and have cup holders that hold actual cups. And yet they keep showing up on the trail.
Part of it is the short wheelbase. A 40 fits through gaps and over ledges that make longer trucks do three-point turns. Part of it is simplicity: solid axles, a straight six and not much else to go wrong, which means not much else to argue about at the trailhead. And part of it is that nothing else looks like it. You can see an FJ40 from across a parking lot and know exactly what it is.
The biggest part, though, is the people. Every FJ40 I photographed this year had somebody standing next to it who wanted to tell me about it. That’s not a truck. That’s a hobby with a title.
What They Cost Now
Here’s the uncomfortable part. According to my Land Cruiser Market Tracker, the median 40 Series sold at auction over the last twelve months went for $30,000, across 141 sales on Bring a Trailer and Cars & Bids. The middle half sold between about $22,000 and $38,000, and the top sale in the tracker is a 1972 ICON FJ43 at $140,000.
That’s why every Wednesday I roast FJ40 listings in Crack Pipe or Nice Price, like the $27,000 1967 FJ40 in Thompson Falls. If you’re shopping, read the 40 Series buyer’s guide first. Rust is not a personality.
If one of these FJ40s is yours, Find My Car has every photo I took of it. And if you want to help me get my own, you know where the fund is.
Keep them dirty.
Five More FJ40s
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