Celeste | 1976 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ43 in Capri Blue

Jason’s take on this 1976 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ43 in Capri Blue:

What do you want me to say here? That this is the nicest and most incredible FJ you will ever see? I would have to be pretty conceited and self-absorbed to think that the FJ we built is by far the leading build across the nation and the world. Anyone who says that clearly has no object lodged in an area we won’t speak of.

This car is nice—very nice indeed—but it isn’t the most beautiful build in the world. What I can say, though, is something far more impactful than the car itself. It took years of risk, traveling, research, money spent, and effort to find and secure a trusted location in Colombia to both source and restore FJs. My partner and I traveled and experimented with Guatemala, Ecuador, and then Colombia to find the right location for us to set up shop.

This car is the product of that hard work—the years of mistakes, flaws, lost time, confusion, and ironing out the details. It wasn’t easy. But it was beautiful. And for that reason, this car does possess a beauty that maybe only I can see.

2F engine—fully rebuilt from pistons to polish. 4-speed—redone. Chassis and body—removed and redone like an artist working from a fresh canvas. We carefully replaced every bolt—literally every single bolt—to ensure that this car could morally and ethically be called a brand-new FJ.

Some makers and builders will state that their cars are “fully restored,” but that word, sadly, has been thrown around so recklessly that it’s now considered a vague statement—open to interpretation. When we say fully restored, we mean it. We mean that everything on that car was turned over and either given a back rub or totally replaced. The car was reborn.

Painted in Capri Blue and stitched in Camel Tan leather, it is indeed a beautiful piece. This car represents the collaboration of a few dozen people and hundreds of hours of work. If our prices reflected all the labor put in by the hour, you’d be looking at a $500,000 car. But it’s just a nicely done FJ43. Nothing special about that—except that it’s special to find a place that cares about the car and the future epoch it will have.

Consider this next time you have an “opinion about a classic car.” You’re looking at the artistic engineering and craftsmanship of a few hundred people—brought together into one machine meant to carry you from one location to another with complete and utter free will. This amalgamation of metal and oil was assembled by people who are likely dead—whose thoughts, love, and passion went with them. What’s left is the car before you.

So if you feel a certain happiness for the car—good. That happiness is the baseline of respect it deserves. If you have a negative opinion about it, shove it into a dustbin. You didn’t build that car—someone else did. Let it transport you both physically and emotionally. That car has seen more than you—most likely. Idle in its opinions, fervent in its desire to move, beautiful in rust or shine, motion or repose.

Let us give you moving art like this blue FJ43. Fall in love with cars again.

Jason Doornick
Car Hunter & Founder