The new Land Cruiser is built to conquer trails — but not this one IIHS scenario
The new Land Cruiser nailed off-road bragging rights but flunked a crucial crash test. The weak spot isn't the driver. It's whoever's sitting behind them.
The 2026 Toyota Land Cruiser was supposed to conquer the wilderness. Instead, it stumbled in a laboratory. The SUV that promises to haul your family anywhere just failed one of the IIHS’s most important crash tests. And the problem isn’t the driver. The problem is whoever’s sitting behind them.
In the updated moderate overlap front test, the Land Cruiser earned only a Marginal rating. According to IIHS, the rear passenger faces a high risk of abdominal injury: the lap belt rides up above the pelvis and digs into soft tissue where it shouldn’t. The phenomenon has a name — submarining. The passenger literally slides under the belt. There’s also a moderate risk of head, neck, and chest injuries. Dummy kinematics? Rated poor.
The paradox is that the Land Cruiser handled almost everything else well. In the small overlap front tests on both driver and passenger sides, the safety cage held its shape. In the side impact, the structure held too. Front crash prevention against vehicles and pedestrians earned the top Good rating. The body is tough, the electronics are smart — but in this one specific scenario, the second row gets short-changed.
And it doesn’t end there. The base 1958 trim with its round LED headlights earned a Good for lighting. The pricier Land Cruiser trim, with its rectangular headlights, dropped to Marginal — glare from the low beams and only fair visibility from the high beams. LATCH anchors for child seats? Rated Acceptable: the lower anchors on the right rear seat are buried too deep into the cushion. Installing a child seat turns into a puzzle.
In the US, the Land Cruiser 250 is sold exclusively as a hybrid with a 2.4-liter turbo — the same powertrain found in the 4Runner and Tacoma. The 2026 model starts at $57,200 for the 1958 trim, climbing to $63,540 for the Land Cruiser trim. Fuel economy is rated at 23 mpg combined.
The pricier trim throws in more aggressive tires, a disconnecting front sway bar, a power liftgate, SofTex upholstery instead of cloth, and power-adjustable front seats. Sounds tempting. But after this IIHS test, buyers face a different question: why pay more for the trim with worse headlight ratings, when rear-seat protection still needs work?
The Land Cruiser can climb where almost everything else gives up. That’s genuinely true. But family safety isn’t measured in ground clearance or locking diffs — it’s measured in what happens in the fraction of a second after impact.