Toyota Land Cruiser 60 Series

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.