The 2023 SEMA show is coming up quickly, and Toyota will be there with a custom-made pickup truck to take over the show hall. The same people who worked on one of the most extreme 40-series Toyota Land Cruisers ever made also worked on the Tacozilla van. The FJ Bruiser is a crazy crawler with a NASCAR V8 engine. A recently uploaded film to Toyota USA’s YouTube page showing the truck being built gave an overview of the project. It was found by Toyota’s motorsports technology group that a 1966 FJ45 truck needed to be fixed. Team leader Marty Schwerter didn’t want to damage the truck’s unique ladder frame, so his team made a tube chassis to make it last longer. It will almost certainly need that because of what’s in the engine. Toyota chose a 5.9-liter NASCAR V8 engine, even though they wanted to build a rock crawler. This engine has been “modified” in an unknown way for this design. (I believe a more excellent cam for low-end power might be the answer.) The pickup looks most like a rock breaker with that much force. The V8 engine looks inside the wheelbase, meaning the result should be easy to drive. In the video, a CAD model of what looks like a high-end Jeep Gladiator is used to show the final specs. More build films will be coming out in the days before the SEMA Show 2023. Next to the FJ Bruiser, there will be a bagged 2023 Chevy Colorado with 24-inch wheels on the show floor. Even though some one-of-a-kind builds are worth six figures or more, Toyota’s official project, the FJ Bruiser, will achieve its goals.
