Monstrous Toyota Land Cruiser Sets World’s Fastest SUV Record

Fully-customized Land Cruiser from the 2016 SEMA Show set a new world record with a GPS-verified speed of 230.02 mph, becoming the fastest SUV in the world.

The Special Equipment Market Association, better known as SEMA, is an auto show where automakers and companies usually showcase insane vehicles that look good, but aren’t necessarily built to function as regular cars. The Toyota Land Speed Cruiser build from last year’s show looked like a prime example of what SEMA stands for, but the automaker somehow managed to set a new world record in the SUV.

The Land Speed Cruiser, which boasts a heavily-modified version of the production car’s 5.7-liter 3UR-FE V8 cranking out more than 2,000 horsepower, managed to hit a GPS-verified and video-documented speed of 230.02 mph. The top-speed run was enough to see the Land Speed Cruiser shatter the previous “World’s Fastest SUV” record by roughly 19 mph, claims Toyota.

“The World’s Fastest SUV record was at 211 mph,” said Toyota’s Motorsports Technical Center Manager, Chuck Wade. “That’s extremely fast. Toyota thought, ‘Why don’t we make a really, ultra-powerful Land Cruiser, and let’s just see how fast we can make it go.”

Clearly, all of the modifications worked, as the Land Speed Cruiser streaked into the records book as the fastest SUV in the world. It took an insanely brave driver, recently retired Toyota NASCAR driver Carl Edwards, to pilot the machine to 230 mph. Getting there, though, wasn’t exactly straightforward, as you can see in the video below.

“At 225 mph, the thing was wandering a little bit,” said Edwards. “All I could think was that Craig said, ‘No matter what, just keep your foot in it,’ and we got 230 mph.” Who would’ve thought that a Land Cruiser would become the fastest SUV in the world?