Dino DC: Japan’s Dream Landcruiser Workshop

Dino DC Video Transcript

Foreign You see me walking right alongside a flex stream we’re in Cho food today this is one place that I literally tell everybody that comes to Japan and are into cars that they really need to stop by one of these Flex dealerships there are specialists in land cruises of every

Generation but what they’ve kind of started doing probably like 10 years ago is restoring these cars retro kind of modding them into a two-tone paint jobs and doing like face swaps you know to put in the 70 face on a bunch of different generations of the of Land Cruisers and uh creating

Quite the fashion these are definitely become kind of a status in the symbol now in Japan you buy them ready made from Flex uh you can either see what they’ve come up with and you know select what you prefer or you can spec your own build if you want some

Funky colors I’ll show you one here this is a cool one here from one of the US bases you can tell when it has the white plates in here and you can kind of spec them with you know funky paint jobs tinted windows they do like uh green or yellow tinted

Windows here’s one and yeah basically every generation of Land Cruiser gets the treatment and also Land Cruiser Prados there’s some FJ cruises here and there as well next door they do vans they do the the grill and headlight swap on the hiace completely transforms the the way that

The van looks if you compare it to what it looks like originally But then yeah I mean it’s pricey stuff you know these are Vans that have like 40 this one is 40 000 kilometers this one is 72 000 and you’re looking at well over 4 million yen by the time you take it home so I guess it’s expensive to be fashionable

To kind of stand out from the crowd but it’s so cool to see that there’s shops like Flex that kind of cater to this really curious market and if you didn’t know you know the Toyota hiace in Japan is one of the most popular cars because it’s used by uh people with small

Businesses or reps or um you know company delivery guys it’s an extremely popular vehicle in Japan and one of the most stolen this one is being left in its original state with an FRP top I’m gonna pull this off and be incredible so here we get an idea of pricing so this is

Selling for 4.6 million yen so you always have to add probably like three four five hundred thousand yen on top of that when it comes to like prepping the vehicle registration an additional costs they always find a way to uh throw in there it’s selling for six million so yeah 6.1 million yen

And for me especially the 60 series is the one that I I love the most it’s just got that kind of very simple rugged design I love the kind of built-in fender flares that kind of make it so special and very easily recognizable and then yeah you have tons of space in

The back this would be a great family car a great daily this is a four liter no pricing on this one but this one is selling for 4.1 it’s about four and a half million by the time you take it home the silver one even nicer going for five

This slightly lifted one here going for uh 4.3 and so on all the way to this this is a a Land Cruiser from about seven years ago when they actually relaunched a limited edition number I think it was in 2015 if I’m not mistaken so it was basically to celebrate the 30th anniversary

The 70 series Land Cruiser so this only has 70 000 kilometers and if you look inside they actually pretty much kept it as was in what when late 80s early 90s when this came up I love the murdered Outlook this one big Toyota tires is a Prado so this has the Chrome hubcaps

Matching Chrome mirrors a little bit of a different look and again it has a 70 series Grille and headlight conversion can’t get enough of these uh old-school grilles in the 80s and 90s upholstery as well yeah most of them have new balls for them as well so leather

Fabric in the middle Hilux surf I know this is even more stock hiace is down here no Square headlight conversions here just regular High aces of different specs big X diesel two wheel drive this is a special package version 4 to ultra life gasoline another diesel here so um

There’s a lot of variety when it comes to these Vans too and this is another popular style the kind of NASCAR look on the on the high Aces like this but you get a lot of these rims that you know even manufacturers like like race create especially for this particular

Fitment of vans so the Toyota hiace or the Nissan Caravan there’s a lot of people that will you know modify them with gonna like lower trim pieces to the body side skirts wheels and they drop them down and get them to sit nicely this is a white body one

This is the Big Daddy you can tell how wide it is it’s again another great example of how the car culture here in Japan just spreads into kind of you know branches that you would never imagine like people doing this kind of stuff on Land Cruisers that are usually

Off-road vehicles but obviously these are built for City use kind of a fashionable accessory for sitting commuting and driving just to stand out a little bit from the crowd and just do things a little bit different from the norm and because of that it has turned into a

Real Fashion and these guys are really coming up crazier and crazier builds cooler conversions and uh I don’t know you guys tell me what you prefer what mix and match Land Cruiser would you create if you had to come to flexstream here in Japan and commission a build

I hope you enjoyed this uh quick stop by another cool car shop in Japan we’ll be doing a lot more of this kind of type story so uh let me know in the comments below what you thought thank you foreign