CarGene
Takanobu Fukuoka

Takanobu Fukuoka

ToyotaDevelopment team member

Timeline

  1. 1971

    Joined

    Toyota

  2. 1980
    Land Cruiser 60 Series
    Land Cruiser 60 Series

    1980–1990Development team member

    "I'm Being Moved to Truck Development"

    Takanobu Fukuoka joined Toyota and for more than ten years, as a passenger-car test driver, was responsible for testing and evaluating cars such as the first-generation Century and the Celica/Carina. He then moved to vehicle evaluation and development for commercial vehicles, and the first Land Cruiser he worked on was the 60 Series. The Land Cruiser at the time was in the commercial-vehicle category, and he says he was shocked, thinking, "I'm being moved to truck development." Even so, he came to believe that the value of a four-wheel-drive vehicle, beyond the division between passenger and commercial vehicles, lay in being able to get through where passenger cars cannot. His superiors and seniors told him to drive until something broke, and he built up that experience. He looks back that up to the 60 Series, it was a vehicle finished as a commercial vehicle able to run on rough roads.

  3. 1984
    Land Cruiser 70 Series
    Land Cruiser 70 Series

    1984–2004Development team member

    A Part Conceived After Falling into a Hole

    Up to the 60 Series, the Land Cruiser was a vehicle finished as a commercial vehicle able to run on rough roads. In developing the 70 Series, Takanobu Fukuoka worked on improving off-road capability, for example by starting test drives off-road outside the company. Around that time, while test driving with his superior in a revetment area near the Tahara Plant, the car fell into a large hole. The leaf spring inverted and the shackle stretched out fully in the opposite direction, and Fukuoka devised a part to prevent the inversion. The 70 Series improved off-road capability, but driving it off-road required a certain amount of skill from the driver. Could anyone be made able to drive off-road with ease? That wish became the starting point for devising Multi-Terrain Select and Active Traction Control.

  4. 1989
    Land Cruiser 80 Series
    Land Cruiser 80 Series

    1989–1997Development team member

    Comfort in Harsh Environments

    In the 1980s, Mitsubishi Motors' Pajero captured well the direction of four-wheel-drive vehicles for enjoying off-roading as leisure. Chief engineer Sadayoshi Koyari, then a young engineer, looks back that it was a period when the Land Cruiser's direction was reconsidered, since Toyota also had vehicles that were highly reliable, durable, and able to drive on rough roads. Up to the 70 Series, rigid-axle suspension and leaf springs were the norm for off-road vehicles, but the 80 Series adopted coil springs, familiar from passenger cars. According to Fukuoka, only when a vehicle has the basic performance to handle harsh surfaces can the people riding in it drive with ease. The theme Fukuoka and the development team pursued in the 80 Series era was how comfortably it could be driven in harsh environments.

  5. 1998
    Land Cruiser 100 Series
    Land Cruiser 100 Series

    1998–2007Development team member

  6. 2007
    Land Cruiser 200 Series
    Land Cruiser 200 Series

    2007–2021Development team member

    Worked with

  7. 2016

    Left

Profile

A Toyota test driver. He moved to vehicle evaluation and development for commercial vehicles, and was responsible for testing and evaluating successive Land Cruisers from the 60 Series to the 200 Series. He is called the Land Cruiser Meister.

Translated from Japanese sources.

Toyota engineers

All Toyota engineers