Fastest SUV

[cheap]

http://www.roadkill.com/carl-edwards...test-suv-ever/

Cross the Simpson Desert in a little of 3 hours!

The words “Toyota Land Cruiser” scarcely conjure up an association with “land-speed record,” but don’t tell that to the Toyota Motorsports Technical Center (TMTC). With a couple of big-honkin’ turbos, they’ve sent their 2016 Toyota “Land Speed Cruiser” to the title of World’s Fastest SUV. Retired Toyota NASCAR driver Carl Edwards took the honors in February with the record-setting run of 230.02 miles per hour at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California.

When it came time to set records, veteran road racer Craig Stanton, who helped develop the project with Toyota, warmed up the SUV with a 198 mph run. He then handed the car over to Edwards for a run down Mojave’s 2.5-mile runway. With a first run of 211 mph, the NASCAR driver equaled the existing record claimed by the Mercedes-based Brabus GLK V12. The TMTC squad cranked up the boost for Edwards’ second run and he hit warp speed all the way to the record-setting 230.02 mph run.

“At 225 mph, the thing was wandering a little bit,” Edwards said. “All I could think was that Craig said, ‘No matter what, just keep your foot in it,’ and we got to 230 mph.”

The work wasn’t always easy, as Toyota showed with this video that chronicles the program’s ups and downs. The Land Cruiser hit 170 miles per hour in oval testing before the Land Speed Cruiser’s reveal at the 2016 SEMA show. They cranked it up and then took it to Mojave on February 9, 2017, to set the record. That attempt included some wrinkles, but Edwards was able to run the record.

So how do you send a 5,875-pound grocery-getter to 230 miles per hour? Luckily for you, Roadkill visited the Land Speed Cruiser’s home in November, just a few weeks after its SEMA reveal. Project lead Chuck Wade—who owns one of the coolest Toyota Corollas in the world, by the way—showed Roadkill editor Elana Scherr around the Land Cruiser at Toyota’s Skunkworks-style facility in Torrance, California.

Wade led a small team with only four full-time staffers on the project for nearly two years. From the outset, they estimated that they’d need about 2,200 horsepower to take the record by a safe margin. That’s a big, crooked number and as you might have guessed, the Land Speed Cruiser is not your garden-variety PTA Meeting Edition.

Wade’s team started with the stock block from the Land Cruiser’s 381-horsepower, 32-valve 5.7-liter 3UR-FE V8, although they bored and stroked out that to 6.2 liters. To handle gobs of boost, Toyota installed custom rods and pistons to match a custom crankshaft. They modified the heads to accept dual fuel injectors that pump E85. Mounted atop all of that was a custom intake plenum with short intake plumbing from the twin turbos.


Packaging the system in an SUV proved challenging and Wade’s team had to mount the Garrett GTX47 turbos low behind the front fascia as a result. That meant the turbos were a low-point for their oiling system, so a remote oil tank and pump were fitted in the rear of the SUV to keep the big snails from oil-starving. Each turbo got its own custom-built intercooler. The two intercoolers share a radiator and the whole system could also be chilled further for short runs with an icebox-style intercooler on the passenger side of the engine bay.

The entire setup can handle, Wade told Roadkill, up to 50 pounds of boost. That would produce at least 3,000 horsepower. Since that was overkill for their goals, they scaled back the power. The entire car was running with the twin-turbo setup only a year after they started, but making everything work together happily took patience and ironing out with test driver Craig Stanton.

The stock Toyota engine management system would have lost its mind had it been fed all the info from a 3,000-horsepower-capable system. Instead, Wade’s team turned to a MoTec engine management system to control the under-hood territory. Incredibly, that MoTec system piggybacks straight from the Toyota CAN bus, which means that all of the non-engine Toyota bits still work in the car. Nav system? Check. Door chime? Check. The Land Cruiser is even registered and has perhaps even seen some street driving.

A purpose-built racing transmission and shifter were installed to handle the huge power from the twin-turbo engine. The stock-ratio 3.91 gearing was left in, which also necessitated the use of a Gear Vendors overdrive to add some more top speed. The all-wheel-drive system could still be used, but for the record-setting runs, Toyota ran the Land Speed Cruiser in rear-wheel-drive configuration.

Excited to tow your boat at 200 miles per hour (Finnegan, we’re looking directly at you)? Not so fast. While the Land Speed Cruiser would happily tow a yacht all day, the team removed the trailer hitch to fit a rear diffuser. It was one of many chassis changes to make record speeds attainable.

The biggest change involved modifying the stock frame. To do that, the team first removed the body for better frame access. The frame between the wheels remains stock, but to fit wider Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires in the rear, they had to design their own subframe. That rear subframe lowered the rear end and also accommodated the stock independent rear suspension setup from a Toyota Sequoia.

To lower the front end, Chuck Wade’s team performed an old-school hot-rodding trick: They “Z’d” the front frame. In short, that entails cutting a straight piece of frame, lining up the part of the frame with the suspension to the desired height, and connecting the two pieces with vertical tubing. For the Land Speed Cruiser, that created a five-inch drop. To lower mass at the corners, the team also installed lightweight MOMO/TRD six-spoke wheels and bespoke scalloped, drag-racing-style brakes on all four corners.

Inside, the Land Speed Cruiser is all business. The original seats are all gone, replaced with a single racing seat with five-point harness. A beefy rollcage encloses the driver, who wears a head-and-neck restraint and also has a fire-extinguishing system available at the touch of a finger. Chuck Wade told us that they may reinstall the original interior now that they nabbed the record.

All that adds up to the World’s Fastest SUV with GPS data to back up that claim. Check out our gallery from Elana’s visit the Toyota Motorsports Technical Center and museum along with photos from Toyota of the record-setting run. And make sure to watch Elana’s Facebook Live video walkaround with Chuck Wade right here: