1997 Lexus LX450 FZJ80, 4.5 straight six

This 1997 Lexus LX450 is finished in gold over cream leather and is offered from Kloof by kloof_lx, about this seller, who imported it in 2017. It is the FZJ80 Land Cruiser under the badge, with the 4.5 litre 1FZ-FE straight six, the four speed automatic, full time four wheel drive and the factory locking differentials, and it shows 268,400km.

The problem with this lot is the paperwork rather than the vehicle. The NATIS certificate describes it as a Toyota Land Cruiser and not a Lexus LX450, which is how it was captured when it was registered at import in 2017. The VIN, the chassis stamping and the engine number are all photographed and published and all agree with each other and with the import file. A correction application has been lodged with the licensing department and its reference number is published with the lot.

Asked at intake whether the registration description matches the vehicle, the seller declined to answer in writing until the correction is decided, saying he will not make a written statement that contradicts an official record while an application about that record is open. Kept publishes the decline. A buyer needs to understand that the vehicle transfers as what the NATIS says it is until the department says otherwise, and that this can complicate insurance and resale.

Mechanically the file is strong for the mileage. The head gasket was replaced and the head skimmed by the previous owner in 2019 at 218,400km with the invoice published, the front birfield joints were stripped and repacked in 2021, the entire cooling system was renewed in 2023, and the vehicle was serviced in August. The remaining flaws are a clicking left birfield on full lock, treated corrosion on both rear door bottoms and the tailgate lip, and a dead Nakamichi head unit.

The LX450 is a Land Cruiser 80 with leather, a Nakamichi stereo and a Lexus badge, sold in North America between 1996 and 1997 while the rest of the world bought the same vehicle with a Toyota badge on it. Underneath the trim it is the FZJ80: coil sprung solid axles at both ends, full time four wheel drive with a lockable centre differential, and the 1FZ-FE 4.5 litre straight six that will run to half a million kilometres if the head gasket is watched.

That head gasket is the model's one documented weakness and it is the first question anybody who knows these asks. The rest of the vehicle is the reason the 80-Series is the one overlanders still buy at twenty five years old, and the reason clean examples in this country now cost more than they did five years ago.

Imports arrive here as grey vehicles and they arrive into a registration system that has to decide what to call them. A Lexus badged 80-Series is the exact case where that goes wrong, because the model name never existed on a South African document and the vehicle is mechanically a Land Cruiser. The correction is routine and the paperwork is slow, and a vehicle in the middle of it is a genuinely different proposition from one that is not.