"Jurassic Park" Toyota Land Cruiser

[spencer1984]

I first read Jurassic Park the year before the movie came out, and was hooked immediately. The Land Cruiser tour cars mentioned in the text were always something that I wanted to build in scale, but since the descriptions of them were a bit sparse it took me a few brainstorming sessions over the next few years to come up with a design that I liked and felt fit the time and style of the story.  The kit was Tamiya's 80 VX Limited, modified to look like a not-quite-finished preproduction variant.  Custom additions include a scratchbuilt electric motor/transmission setup, generic dashboard with 2x late '80s computer monitors, and graphics I drew up in Illustrator.

[Lownslow]

so cool

[slusher]

Super nice...

[Drake69]

NICE WORK. It goes along with my Jurassic Park Ranger Jeep I built a while ago.

Love the CRT's in the cab!

[Zarana-X]

Nice work! looks totally believable as an alternative to the Exploders used in the film. 

[Spex84]

Very cool. I enjoyed the book too. The decals and detailing on this build are great. Those big CRTs are funny, but believable too.

[spencer1984]

Thanks, guys!  Yeah, the CRTs were one of the things I had to figure out...I thought about something smaller, but in 1989 a color-capable monitor would've been huge by modern standards!

[Danno]

Terrific.

[ChrisR]

Looks great!

[Jeepxj]

Very cool.

[kruleworld]

awesome work and an interesting take. I also noted some of the differences between book and film.

[gatorincebu]

    That is a really well done theme build. I like it!

 

 

   Be Well

    Gator

[Davewilly]

thats pretty cool!  You did a great job with it!

[darthsideous]

I always enjoy seeing your work on many different sites and this one is no exception. The graphics and paint are great and as another poster said, a believable alternative to the rangers in the movie. Great job!

[Platerpants]

I like me a good movie about dinosaurs eating people. nice work

[kilrathy10]

That is a really nice looking model....Amazing what you've done, here....I like it....Weird how those monitors look in there.....Shows how much technology has progressed since then.....Awesome build, though.....

[martinfan5]

Thats pretty neat

[Atmobil]

Great looking Land Cruiser, you have made some great details on this. How did you make the electricmotor thing?

Interesting that today Toyota is not interested in pure electric cars but are focusing more on hybrids, I guess if they did make an all electric Land Cruiser we would have a stampede at Toyota dealers here in Norway.

[HappyEmu]

Wow this is impressive 

[spencer1984]

Thanks!

[SkylineGTR34]

Good morning, Bill👋😉

 

Except for the RHD windshield wipers, this is otherwise a very successful prototype or pre-production model. Very clean and accurate. There are so many ways to customize an 80 Land Cruiser, and you pulled it off 😉👍 My utmost respect for that. Hats off! A very successful and unique concept!

 

Best regards 👋

Eugen S.

Edited Tuesday at 09:54 AM by SkylineGTR34

[spencer1984]

Thank you! The kit came with both, but I honestly can't remember if I used the RHD wipers just so I would have the LHD set for my parts box or because I thought that since the Park vehicles were said to have come directly from Osaka that they should have a mix of export and JDM features. Either way, good catch!

[SkylineGTR34]

Oh yeah, I also noticed that the Land Cruiser doesn't have any mirrors. Is that intentional, or are the parts missing? Otherwise, I agree with you that the park vehicle was delivered fresh from Osaka, which of course explains the RHD windshield wipers. So, it's a pre-production model anyway. 😉👍

[spencer1984]

They were intentionally left off; when I was looking around at other tracked theme park vehicles it seemed like most all of them had no mirrors. Probably one less thing for Park guests to accidentally break.

[Bugatti Fan]

It should be a believable alternative to the Ford Rangers used in the film, Michael Crichton actually described the tour vehicles as being Toyota Land Cruisers in his Jurassic Park novel. So technically the model featured by the OP is correct to the book description. A very good model it is too !

The JP films 1 2 and 3 although technically brilliant were a hotch potch  of parts extracted from Jurassic Park and the Lost World novels. I too like the OP read the original JP at least 2 years before the first film was released. Lots of artistic licence used as for instance a Dilophosaurus actually did not have an extending frill like a frilled lizard. The book actually describes in graphic detail how Nedry watched his intestines being pulled out whilst being eaten alive. Of course the film was toned down to suit a less than restricted  target audience and promote the spin off after sales stuff.

Edited 4 hours ago by Bugatti Fan