Auto News 5

I blame it all on the Icon FJ40. A few years back, my wife and I took a road trip through the Rockies in an achingly gorgeous 1967 Toyota Land Cruiser. That little four-by-four was fresh from an Icon overhaul, which bestowed it with a modern four-cylinder International turbo-diesel and a five-speed manual transmission. Wending across the Continental Divide, a note of turbo whistle overlaying the diesel's growl, fresh mountain breezes wafting through the open-air cockpit, I might've fallen a little bit in love with that thing. Of course, we always want what we can't have, and in the States a convertible, manual-transmission diesel four-by-four is a mythical creature. That Icon FJ carried an appropriately mythical sticker price of $122,000. If I want my own version of the diesel FJ experience, I'll have to get creative.