FJ40 Land Cruiser is Everything that was Great about the Swingin’ ’70s
Three-owner 1978 FJ40 wears its original Freeborn Red paint, looks showroom-perfect inside and out all these years later.
At the height of disco and the birth of the first primetime soap opera, Dallas, the FJ40 Land Cruiser was still going strong, having just landed in then-West Germany with gasoline and diesel options available to our friends working to keep the Cold War at bay. In the United States, though, the most recent upgrade was a set of front discs in 1976, which improved the little Toyota’s stopping ability greatly.
That little trip down Memory Lane led us to this Freeborn Red 1978 FJ40 we happened upon at Vintage Land Cruisers of Flagstaff, Arizona, a little stunner that we can’t take our eyes off of for a second.
Moving this red FJ40 is the venerable 2F inline-six, introduced in the 1975 model year. In its day, the mill made 135 horses and 200 lb-ft of torque, directed to the rear or all corners via a four-speed manual.
The low-mileage FJ40 not only looks good on the outside, but amazing on the inside, too. The black and red interior is ready for more fun under the desert sun, the gray buckets and rear jump seats are unblemished, and the dash is showroom-fresh. A lot of that has to do with the fact that among the three owners who’ve called this Toyota theirs, all have kept it garaged whenever it was done for the day, protecting it from the blazing sunlight.
The second owner of this little FJ40 held onto it for 18 years, the longest term of ownership in its four decades of playing in the Arizona desert. According to the seller, it’s recently had some professional maintenance done to keep it in tip-top shape, and is ready to tackle the next four decades and beyond.
This FJ40 is one candy apple of a find, born free to run anywhere in the world. Long may it continue to do so.
Photos: Vintage Land Cruisers
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