Interior, function and form

Inside, you slide into huge, luxuriously trimmed leather seats. They’re a little flat, but brilliantly comfortable. Ahead, the expansive control deck of the big Sahara is free of unnecessary frippery, with an almost-innocuous but functional dash layout and ‘touch screen’ controls.

It comes with reversing camera (de rigueur now on premium cars), six-stacker CD player (also DVD and MP3 compatible) and nine-speaker sound system to keep things hopping.

Meanwhile, sat nav will get you to where you want to go; and tinted windows, four-zone air conditioning and cool box will get you there with the creature comforts taken care of.

The steering column is both power-tilt and telescopic, with steering wheel audio controls (and leather-bound of course).

There are air-bags everywhere including driver and front passenger knee airbags, and side airbags for mid-row passengers (it’s an eight-seater with all seats fully deployed).

For interior style, it is neither overdone nor too plain - it’s just right.

It feels as a premium car should. It is easy to settle into - everything is in its place, well thought-out, and robust. The whole car feels like it has been screwed together to outlast civilisation. Even the grab-handles on the front doors – tactile to the palm and precisely where the hand falls – feel vault-door solid.

And that’s another thing with the Sahara. Hardly anything jars, everything falls nicely to hand and it is effortless to be in, as driver or passenger. It is as if the car, like the perfect tool-of-trade, simply disappears.

At the wheel, because it is such an easy place to be, there is no reason for it to occupy your thinking.

On the road

On the black top, it pulls like a train and, for such a large car, is surprising capable and well-mannered.

With an all-new (for the 200 Series) double-wishbone coil-sprung front suspension and improved rear suspension, the Sahara swallows freeway kilometers with the ease of a comfortable saloon.

Its ‘built-for-work’ origins are all-but invisible on the highway: it soaks up the bump and grind from below imperiously and wind-noise is all-but absent, leaving just the mellow hum of the diesel at work and the suppressed shearing of the dual-purpose Dunlops. (A degree of road noise is a given with any wider-lugged tyre.)

Key to the Sahara’s suspension is the Australian-invented Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System (KDSS) providing maximum wheel articulation off-road but a comfortable ‘flat’ ride on-road.

Our time with the car, both on-road and off, would indicate it works, especially coming into its own in off-road extremes.

That said, tighter secondary bitumen roads can find the Sahara out when pushing through the turns. Here, there is a degree of body-roll and the Dunlop tyres can be found wanting. But, with over two-and-a-half tonne of body mass to catch and fling sideways, a tendency to lean and push wide is more than a little understandable when pressing on.

Four-up for the TMR excursion into the Victorian high-country, each of us came away surprised and impressed with the big Sahara’s on-road aplomb.

The V8 twin-turbo diesel, matched to Toyota’s six-speed AB60F transmission, is a marvel. Producing a staggering 650Nm of torque and 195kW of power from its 4.5 litres of twin-turbocharged V8 diesel power, it can easily run at the head of traffic.

More to the point, for overtaking, between 80km/h and 120km/h, the bulk of the big Sahara simply disappears and it surges effortlessly ‘out and around’.

Press it relentlessly hard of course, and the simpler laws of physics dictate that you will pay a price at the diesel pump. But even when asked to work hard it won’t send you to the poorhouse. For the weight it moves and the power it puts under the toe, that wonderful twin-turbo diesel V8 is surprisingly frugal.

We were showing a return of well under 10 l/100km after a day or so in the ‘burbs and for the highway stretch east of Melbourne and into the hills. It was only in the heavy going that the averages started to fall.

Toyota claims an average of 10.3 l/100km for the combined cycle. Under normal driving (not towing) with a mix of country and city kilometers, that would appear to be achievable.