Name: Catherine White
The classic: Toyota Land Cruiser
‘It’s lovely to drive, makes you feel safe and it goes absolutely anywhere. It’s never let me down. I’ve travelled all up the East coast of Ireland, down to Cornwall, and into the northern reaches of Scotland in it. You never notice the distance in the Land Cruiser.
When I first bought it, I told myself I’d be driving it for the next couple of years. Two years became five, and after that it just became my forever car!’
Catherine is based in Kent and has owned her beautiful Toyota Landcruiser since 1994.
‘I wasn’t planning on buying a new car,’ Catherine explains, ‘but my boyfriend and I had ordered a new Buccaneer caravan. Around ten months before we went to pick our new caravan up, the dealer told us that we’d also need a new car, as the VW Golf I owned at the time wouldn’t be able to manage the weight of towing the caravan.
‘They told me to go and get something ‘really big’ like an estate car, but my boyfriend suggested that we get a 4×4 instead. We went to a Toyota dealership, they told me about the Land Cruiser and I just loved it. It’s been my car ever since!
‘It was 6 months old when I bought it, and had belonged to an estate in Scotland.’
Having kept her Land Cruiser in tip-top shape for almost three decades, Catherine is determined to keep it as original as possible. ‘I hate when people get old cars and put new things on them,’ she explains.
‘When the CD player broke a few years ago, I searched everywhere to get it fixed and replaced with the exact same one. I like it be exactly as it came out of the factory; it’s how it should be!’
The mechanics of the Land Cruiser
When it comes to the mechanical side of things, Catherine prefers to do most of the work on the Land Cruiser herself, alongside her partner. ‘We try to do most of it ourselves, but occasionally it will need to go to a Toyota specialist garage,’ she says.
Catherine has a rule about parts – ‘they all need to be from Toyota – and with good reason! I remember one occasion when I’d bought generic parts and had a horrendous incident driving on the A1.
‘I was doing about 60mph and overtook a truck, when suddenly the car was going all over the place. I thought one of the tyres might have gone, so I pulled over to take a look. Weirdly, there was nothing wrong with them, so I checked over the rest of the car and couldn’t see a thing – it all seemed fine.
