This 1969 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 is in Bogata, Texas, is listed on eBay with fairly heavy bidding, and has a current bid price of $3,200. It was stored in a Texas barn for years but it “cranks right up an runs good, no internal noises or smoke”. I wish I could say the same about myself.

This is a heck of a buy, with less than two days left on the auction! Unless you have been in a Texas barn for years, you know that Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40s are hot; some restored examples go for $30,000, $50,000, or more. Here’s your chance to get a pretty nice one, that needs a few hopefully easy fixes and maintenance items and some cosmetic help, for a great price. There is no mention as to if it has a steel hard top so I’m assuming that there isn’t one. In Texas you’d want a soft top anyway.

The seller says that “the brake master cylinder reservoir is broke an will need replaced, it has no brakes at the time other than hand brake”, but since the hand brake works it can be driven up onto a trailer when you win the auction and the shipper picks it up and delivers it to your garage. They mention that the radiator hoses need to be changed but you’d do that anyway, along with all of the other regular maintenance and service items. If that’s all there is it’s a no-brainer. In 1960 Toyota launched the FJ40 and they went out of production in 1984. It’s hard to believe that Toyota hasn’t had a rugged, soft-top, Jeep-like vehicle like this for over three decades. They have had other 4WD vehicles, of course, but nothing like the FJ-series. Unless I’m mistaken, the “new” (newly-cancelled, in 2014) Toyota FJ Cruiser didn’t have a soft top, other than customs and concepts. This 1969 FJ has a new soft top, so that’s nice.

Like almost any American muscle car or vintage pickup, most parts should be available for the Toyota FJ40. New seat covers and padding shouldn’t be tough to do and once you’re done with that and some other work, it’ll look great. Well, it won’t look like it’s been totally restored, unless you go that route. Dash pads are available, too, as are most parts for these vehicles. This FJ would be fun to get everything working and drive it as it looks here, in my opinion. It has a manual column shift, no automatic was available and in 1974 a 4-speed was added. The rear jump seats are there and in decent shape.

This is Toyota’s F-engine, a 3.9L, inline-six cylinder with around 110 hp. It doesn’t look too bad under there, some maintenance and detailing would do wonders for this engine. As far as the body goes, the seller says that “the floor pans are solid with no rust through that I have seen, it does have some rust at rear of truck where a lot of fj40s do.” This FJ has not one but two winches! One mounted in the usual spot where you’d expect to see one, in the front, but there is also one mounted inside the rear compartment to pull it from the back. The seller doesn’t know the condition of either one, though. I think that this would be a great, fairly easy and fun project to get things fixed and do regular maintenance and just drive it. Would you turn this into one of the trailer queen FJs that are all the rage or would you just get it working and drive it?