Barry’s 4×4 “Beast of Africa”

He comes from a family of boys with Land Cruiser toys and is an avid lover of the 4×4 fondly known as “The Beast of Africa” – sorry Landy lovers!

Ballito’s Barry Chapman is a proud member of the Land Cruiser Club of South Africa which he joined in 2009.

“The renowned reliability of a Land Cruiser was the attraction for me. It has quite a cool reputation and Toyota has a solid history.

“I also love the banter between the Land Cruiser and Land Rover drivers,” said Barry, who has owned a number of the sturdy 4x4s starting in 2008.

“When I bought the 1971 FJ145 Land Cruiser it was a bit of a rust bucket and had a documented 1,6 million kilometres on the clock.

It belonged to a guy who did safaris to Kenya, starting in KZN, down to Cape Town and up through Zimbabwe,” said Barry.

He stripped the car down to the chassis and rebuilt it all the way back up.

“I loved that car to bits, but as reliable as it was, it was mighty thirsty! You almost wanted to cut a hole in the floor and drive it the Flintstone way!”

The Land Cruiser had to go and spent its retirement years pulling boats on the beach in Richards Bay – not a bad life.

The FJ45 was replaced by Misty – an import vehicle Land Cruiser Bundera with a turbo diesel.

“This car was chopped up into a 4×4 challenge car and I used to compete with her on the national circuit.

That was a whole lot of fun, I used to roll her regularly, take her up vertical faces and into big holes,” said Barry with great enthusiasm.

“The first challenge I ever entered was in 2009 and I came second. I competed with Misty for two years.

“I eventually put a three-litre six cylinder Toyota Supra motor into her. This was a game changer from the donkey diesel.

“She was fast. Once I hurt myself when I went off a rather large ledge about 2,5 metres high and instead of hitting the accelerator to keep going forward I hit the brakes…my roll cage snapped off and I ended up hitting my head quite hard.”

That saw the end of Misty and the welcoming of a 1998 95 series Land Cruiser Prado with a three litre KZTE turbo diesel engine.

“This one only had a mild 350 000 kilometres on the clock – a spring chicken really.

“My wife, three boys and I had lots of family fun in this car – it had so much space and cool suspension all round so it was a helluva lot more comfortable to drive.

“I sold it with 486 000 kilometres on the clock and it had never missed a beat.”

His newest upgrade is a stylish 150 series Prado 2013 with some fancy mods to make it extra fun to play with.

“I have added an Ironman bumper and a nice big winch. I have taken off the side steps and put on some good, strong rock sliders.

“I changed the tyres from the standard 18 inch to the 17 inch so that I have more meat on my tyre. You also have to have roof racks and an ostrich wing 270 degree awning for a big ass bunch of shade.

“Engine wise, I put a three-inch free flow exhaust pipe on it that loosened everything up a little bit.”