Originally published in Toyota Trails Magazine

Karl Collins' completely customized 1965 Toyota FJ45

Okay, I’m probably not the only Land Cruiser owner who’s heard that question, but I seem to be hearing it more and more. Somehow the people asking innately realize there has to be a story behind a truck like this. Every Cruiser tells a story, doesn’t it?

I know I’m not the only one with a story about their Land Cruiser, but if you’ve got the time, I’d like to share the story behind this one. It’s a 1965 FJ45LV. It is the first stick shift I ever drove. It was not mine at the time—it was my cousin’s and he didn’t hide the keys very well…. But let me back up just a little.

The Motley Crew

I grew up in Torrance, California, with my two cousins, Paul and John. My parents both worked and my aunt was a stay at home mom. They lived in a better school district so from kindergarten on, I was dropped off at their house every morning and went to school with my cousins. I was like a brother who just slept at another house.

Life was good. My dad and my uncle were avid outdoorsmen—hunting, fishing, backpacking, scuba diving, etc. To be honest, I don’ t know how they did it. We didn’t have a lot of money but there always seemed to be a friend with a boat to go tuna fishing, a cabin up in Big Bear to go sledding, a dune buggy to take to the sand in Glamis, a Willy’s to go camping in Death Valley, and on and on. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had two great men teach me the importance of enjoying and respecting the outdoors. We were expected to be safe, respectful and responsible in whatever we did.

Karl, Paul, and John

My cousins and I were exactly a year apart each—Paul was the oldest, then John, then myself. What a motley crew. We looked nothing alike; Paul had blonde hair with blue eyes, John brown hair and glasses, and I was the freckled red haired kid. We played little league together, beat the crap out of each other, stood up for each other, lit off firecrackers in the neighbor’s flower garden. All the typical stuff you’d expect from three of the most unlikely brothers you have ever seen.

Well all things change and around age 9, my uncle took an opportunity to start a business in Boise, Idaho. Just like that, I became an only child. That stunk. I now had to go to a new school, make new friends, basically start all over again. Without my brothers to hang out with, I started going to the library after school—I read everything I could get my hands on. I grew smarter and fatter.

The old Willy's

Back to the truck. My uncle worked construction in Idaho. In the winter, when work slowed down, he would go varmint hunting. The only problem was the old Willy’s had caught fire on our last trip to Glamis and burned to the ground. In 1979, my uncle found a truck that looked a lot like his Willy’s, only it was a Toyota. He drove it, liked it, and offered the guy $1,400 for it, which was accepted. In order to get the Cruiser ready to go hunting, my uncle took out the back seat, built a platform in the back and cut a big opening in the roof so a spotter could stand in the truck with a spotlight. That first weekend they shot $1,600 worth of coyote, bobcat and mountain lion pelts. And the truck performed perfectly.

The Land Cruiser served as a hunting rig for a couple years. Then Paul turned 14, and in Idaho at the time, that was the legal driving age. I don’t think it was ever official but the Land Cruiser just sort of slowly became Paul’s. I was still in southern California, and 12 years old and incredibly jealous that my cousin had his own 4WD Toyota and could go fishing and hunting whenever he felt like it, which was often.

I spent every summer in Boise for the next several years. My cousins and I learned how to swing a hammer working for my uncle and I picked up the nickname Bumper Grabber because anytime someone was traveling to or from Boise, I’d ask to go along, even if it was just for a weekend. I learned to drive at age 12 in the deserts of Nevada. To this day, my mom’s not sure whether or not we would stop at The Bunny Ranch along the way. I can neither confirm nor deny those rumors.

I idolized my older cousin, Paul. He had his license, he could fly fish and tie his own flies, kicked for the high school football team, pitched for the baseball team, played jazz saxophone in the band. He was one of those guys you either liked because he was so good at everything or hated because he was so good at everything. The cool thing was that whenever I got back up there, it was as if I had never left. Moreover, the Land Cruiser was the centerpiece of daily life. We drove it to work, took the old dirt roads to get lunch, went cruising downtown with it on Friday nights, you name it. You have to remember, he was older, athletic, and popular and I was the chubby cousin from the city, but no one ever gave me crap if I was with my cousins in that Cruiser. Nothing else on the road at the time looked as cool to me as that old Cruiser.

I have so many great memories with that Land Cruiser. Towing a toboggan down a snow covered road… yep. First time trying snuff… yep. Hunting whistle pigs for a quarter a piece.... you got it. I can even remember the day Reagan was shot. Paul ditched school because I was in town and we went wheeling up near Bogus Basin. We got a flat tire and had no spare. We hiked back to the highway and hitched a ride down the mountain. The driver was somewhat strange and asked us if we knew about Reagan being shot. We were convinced the guy was a nut job and got out as soon as we could, certain that we had just escaped a psychopath.

Well, like I said earlier, life is about change. We all got older, I started coming into my own back in California and trips to Boise decreased to 2 or 3 times a year. I was 17, John was 18 and Paul was 19. Although Paul had broken several high school field goal records, he didn’t get the college scholarship he had hoped for. “There’s always walk on at Boise State,” I can remember him telling me optimistically. Then he and his girlfriend got serious, decided to get arried and soon enough she was pregnant. He got a job as an apprentice butcher and they got their own place.

Then life really changed for all of us. I remember my mom calling me with the sound of tears in her voice. Apparently Paul had been having headaches and passed out while painting his new place. He never really came out of it. He was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma that had metastasized to his brain. The prognosis was horrible. My mother and my girlfriend and I immediately got in the car to make the trip to Boise. That drive had always been fun and exciting—this was the worst drive ever.

Paul's Obituary

When we finally arrived, I hardly recognized my cousin. It was the worst feeling I had ever experienced, still is. The brother I looked up to was completely helpless, unable to talk but clearly able to see me and recognize me. The only positive spin I can put on this is that my girlfriend and I had only been dating for a couple of months at the time. While we were visiting my cousin, he became nauseous and got sick. Rather than freak out or become disgusted, this young girl showed the most sincere compassion you could imagine. She comforted him, helped me clean and change everything and made it all seem like no big deal. All for someone she had never met before but had heard countless stories about. I know it sounds corny, but when I witnessed that I knew this was the type of person I could always respect. We married 7 years later and have been married now for 13 years.

Paul’s wife gave birth to a boy, Anthony, while Paul was still with us. Now maybe I’m a little sentimental about all this, but I am convinced that Paul fought and hung on long enough to see his son. He died 6 weeks later.

The Land Cruiser was without a doubt a part of Paul. It was simply out of the question to sell the vehicle or get rid of it. My uncle decided to store it, maybe someday Anthony would want it to somehow connect with his father. It was driven a couple times a year but for the most part it just sat. Paul’s widow got remarried, had another child and moved further north. Her husband raised Anthony as his own.

My cousin John had a very hard time with Paul’s death. He had felt as if he lived in Paul’s shadow and tortured himself with the thought, “Why Paul? Why not me? It should have been me.” He joined the Navy, got into some trouble with drinking, decided to leave everything behind and went to work in Alaska on fishing boats and in packing plants. He called me saying he was on his way to Honduras on a cargo ship 2 years ago. That was the last I’ve heard from him.

Anthony graduated from high school 2 years ago and my uncle had the Cruiser towed north up to his mother’s place, hoping he might want to restore it. Unfortunately he is really more into sports cars than trucks, and to be fair, there is no strong connection to the Cruiser for him. The man who raised him is the father he knows, and he did a good job with a bad situation.

First family outing in the old FJ45

I took Paul’s death hard as well. Fortunately, I had a very strong support system. I continued to work with my uncle in the summers and saved enough money to go to college at UCLA. I’m now a foot and ankle surgeon, married with 3 year old twins. I’ve since moved to the Mid west to practice. I got a call about a year ago from Paul’s widow saying that the truck was sitting in a field behind her place. Anthony didn’t want it and she and her husband wanted to remove it. “Do you want that old Toyota?” she asked me. What’s less than a nanosecond? That’s about how long it took me to answer. “You know it’s not running, right? It’s getting pretty rusty too. I’m not sure you’re gonna be able to get any parts for it.” I think she felt guilty, as if she were pawning it off on me and wanted to clear her conscious.

Paul's mural of the Boise hillsides inside the tailgate of the FJ45

After quite a bit of wondering what to do next I decided I really didn’t have the time or skills to get the 45 back on the road myself. I was going need a professional. So after several emails and phone calls, I decided to have the Land Cruiser transported to Jonathan Ward’s shop, TLC 4X4, in Van Nuys, California. He was frighteningly honest with me. “It’s rough, Karl. What do you want me to do? I don’t think I can do anything short of going through everything. Everything is either bent, busted, rusted or missing. I can keep it at the shop a little while so you can think about it.” I knew it was bad but not that bad. Some of the problems I remembered—no fuel gauge, so we had a length of rope with a knot in it, a big glob of silicone where the parking brake should be, bent fenders where wheels had come loose. I had forgotten that Paul had painted the inside of the tailgate with a mural of the Boise hillsides. “Looks like someone grabbed some paint brushes, rolled up a fat one and went to town,” is how Jonathan reminded me.

FJ45 Gets a Make-over

5.7L RAM Jet Fuel Injection

So after many more emails I deferred to Jonathan’s expertise. I told him what I wanted to do with the truck, why I still wanted the truck and he told me what he would do if it were his. “Keep it the way it is, but let’s go through all the mechanicals. It’ll be a sleeper. It can stay the way you remember but you can run it all you want.

Now I know I will get some grief over this but everything was rough. It was going to cost me a fair amount to rebuild the existing components and I feared I would never be able to get modern reliability and use it the way I wanted to with the original components. So we upgraded the old beast with new mechanicals, new engine, transmission, transfer case, axles, springs, steering—you get the idea. I’ve thought about this a lot. Some people will be upset that I didn’ t keep everything stock. Others might think I should have gone bigger or shinier or quieter. Most in my family think why bother at all—“You coulda bought a Hummer!” All valid points, but not to me. Those aren’t things I wanted. I’m not a collector. I’m not a rock crawler. I’m not trying to prove anything to anybody. And I know that bringing this Land Cruiser back to life isn’t going to bring my cousin back. But it does take me back. It takes me back to a simpler time, with good memories spent with my family. That’s what I want. And that’s what I want to pass down to my kids. It’s already doing that.

When the truck was finally completed (okay, it’ll probably never be completed), I had it transported back to Boise. My dad and I drove out to Boise while my mother, wife and kids flew out. Simply getting a chance to sit and talk to my dad, uninterrupted, was a rare gift. Watching my grandmother smile while seeing her great grandchildren playing was a bonus. I saw my aunt looking at the Land Cruiser parked in her driveway and wondered what she must be thinking. She used to watch for his truck out that same window to see if he was coming home after a late night out.

And that, my friends, is the story of this old truck.

Editor's Note:

This amazing FJ45 was put back together by TLC 4x4 and the folks at Doug Jenkins Custom Hot Rods. TLC 4x4 made the mechanical and structural improvements, and Doug Jenkins Custom Hot Rods did the custom paint job

A special THANKS to Mike Marino from Doug Jenkins Custom Hot Rods for brining this story to our attention.

Standing next to FJ45 is Art Ottenad who did the design and all the air brush work on the project. He spent over 120 hours on this vehicle to get the rustlike effect.