Flag on the play for "already free". By that budget measure everyone would already be halfway there and pro drivers would be over the top there in spades..
It really has to be something that any of us could acquire in fully functional working order for under $50K.
Land Cruisers/Land Rovers are cool but I have a friend with a late 70s one that is on several waiting lists just to get a rear wiper arm. Gotta wonder how much it is to maintain something like that where to keep it original you have to wait for someone to retire another one to get a wiper arm..
Sure. I paid $13,800 in 2005 @ 105K miles (original price $51K). I have put about $8K into it for upgrades: front and rear tube bumpers, roof rack, custom suspension, diff gears, tires and rims, and some other goodies like head unit. Let's call it $22K. Maybe $23K because I just had a new custom exhaust put in at 231K miles. $25K because I probably forgot a few things, but some stuff was done by the PO in that $13.8K (sliders, driver's seat rebuild and recover, head gasket as PM, etc.).
You could buy such a thing for about $10K now with the basic mods I have, fully baselined maintenance by some OCD Toyota dude. It would not be low miles, but it would be a Cruiser. Mine is solid as a rock at 21 years old. There isn't a single squeak or rattle.
As for parts, it's a '95. I buy most of what I need, Toyota OEM (or their actual parts supplier such as Aisin), from Amazon on Prime and it gets here for free in two days. I did the water pump and fun clutch earlier in the summer. $160 or so, about 90 minutes and two beers.
Because you can do almost all of the work yourself with about 6 different metric sockets and some other odds and ends tools, and because the platform is so overbuilt (it carries about a half ton of chassis weight over a typical peer sized truck) cost of ownership is incredibly low.
Now whether three tons of piggy fun is your idea of a dream is another question. Probably depends on how much things like this move you...
Land Rover? Their reliability is legendary
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