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The Official Publication of the Toyota Land Cruiser Association.
Since 1976 and Still Going Strong. |
Training the FJ Cruiser Trail Teams
by Paul Williamsen
The following feature is an excerpt from Toyota Trails, the official publication of TLCA. To read the entire article, join TLCA now!
Blazing through western Colorado on I70, squinting into the sunset, late to Moab or Cedar City, or blink-.ing into the sunrise towards Vail or Colorado Springs, have you ever stopped at Grand Junction to top up your tanks? Have you stood there, listening to the dollars zinging through the pump, mesmerized by the colorful strata of the high mesas encircling the confluence of the Gunnison and the Colorado thinking, “I bet there’s some good wheeling back up in there…?”
There is wonderful wheeling up there and it’s surprisingly easy to get to it. So easy, in fact, that in March 2006 a bunch of enthusiasts who had never even met each other went into those hills every day for a week in brand-new, never-been-driven, unmodified Toyota FJ Cruisers. And came out safely every evening, often far past sunset, with nothing worse than desert racing stripes to show for it. This was the orientation and training for the FJ Cruiser Trail Teams.
What are the FJ Cruiser Trail Teams? After working with them for four months, I’m still not really sure I know. I’m pretty sure what they’re not: they’re not salespeople with laptops or pads of triplicate orders forms (“Would you like yours in Solar Yellow or Voodoo Blue?” —“How about that subwoofer!”). They’re also not professional hotshots showing off their technical expertise on impossible obstacles in completely built custom trucks with unobtanium birfields, hyberbaric suspensions, and computer-controlled sway bars. They’re definitely not corporate spokes-geeks, pitching the brand, taking opinion surveys and doing focus groups for future products.
Trail Team members came from every corner of the United States—volunteers were found driving their Toyotas at off road events in 2005 from the Everglades to Puget Sound, from Anza Borrego to Tellico, from Minnesota to Texas. All of them had off-road driving experience but their skill levels were as varied as the terrain they were used to driving over. What they all shared was a devotion to off-road driving, to treading lightly and to their favorite Toyota: Maureen Turner loves her 4Runner; Gustaf Kupetz and Robbie Antonson have 80 series rigs; Ron Quitevis has a rock crawler that used to be a Tacoma—I think. A few team members, to be frank about it, have parked perfectly capable Defenders for the duration of this tour. What every team member had was spare time or an understanding family—Toyota needed just eight months out of their lives.
The team members came to Grand Junction in March to learn what they had signed up to do. Toyota needed to learn how well the team members could work together with people they’d never met, pulling their own weight and their co-driver’s weight, and still have nice manners after a 24-hour day in the saddle with the promise of a damp tent on wet pine needles at the end of the drive.
Trail Team members were challenged with an off-road boot camp planned by Bill Burke, the legendary driver, guide and trail boss of 4-Wheeling America (www.bb4wa.com) in nearby Fruita, CO. Bill’s been working with Toyota for several years, advising FJ Cruiser engineers during the critical final testing and tuning. Aided by fellow off-road legends Tom Collins and Lee Magee, Bill laid out a week that flowed through the beautiful mesas around the valley and trained the team members in basic off-road techniques and terminology, safety and recovery techniques, and prepared them with team-building activities, environmental sensitivity training, and other character development.
On Monday, March 20, the team members met for the first time. Each team had an experienced lead driver and one or two other drivers, and each also carried a producer and an assistant to upload photos to the website (www.Toyota.com/FJTrailTeams), take care of the arrangements and the bills, the tools and supplies, and most importantly, the t-shirt inventory. They all had to fit into two stock FJ Cruisers, each with an enclosed aluminum trailer to haul their gear.
The Team members had a half day introduction to the engineering and features of the new FJ Cruiser, then they were taken into the hotel parking lot to see their new FJs for the first time. There was a fleet of eight colorful trucks, three of them hand built prototypes, and the others early production test units built for quality control checking. It was the Teams’ job to check them out—thoroughly.
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