80-Series: The Ultimate JDM 4x4
Better rested than the last shoot — which, to be fair, wouldn’t have been difficult — I found myself on the road early Saturday morning, heading for Dave’s place. He had a few small jobs to finish up and I figured I’d lend a hand, but in truth I was just glad to have a quieter start this time. That calm didn’t last long, though. Halfway there, I realised I’d left all my camera gear sitting neatly by the door at home. Not my finest moment thats for sure but I’ve had worse starts to my morning.
Eventually, with the boot now crammed full of equipment and coffee number three in hand, the day properly began. We loaded Dave’s Hilux Surf — stay tuned for that one, theres more than a few late nighters and a couple stories bound to wangle there way out of the woodwork when the times right — and pointed ourselves toward Inistioge, just twenty minutes down the road.
Inistioge is somewhere I know well. My grandmother grew up here, my dad spent most summers living here and when I was younger, it was the backdrop to so many family visits. Returning always feels like stepping back in time. The hills, the river, the stone bridges — none of it has changed, and that’s exactly the magic of it. There’s a kind of permanence here, as though life moves just slowly enough to hold onto the details.
Woodstock House and its grounds were the focus for the day. It’s a place with so many layers, nooks, crannies — walled gardens, crumbling greenhouses, forests that swallow you whole. The paths stretch out toward the River Nore, winding down toward The Red House, where the old bridges and waterfall sit quietly. It felt like the perfect setting to film something as cleanly rugged as this 80-Series Land Cruiser.
For me, the 80-Series is the ultimate JDM 4x4. It’s honest. Built in an era when Toyota didn’t cut corners and weren’t hell-bent on lamping a hybrid battery into their entire fleet. I don’t think few vehicles carry the sheer presence of this, the only thing that comes to mind is an R32 GTR or possibly a Porsche in GT3 guise. But no other ‘truck‘ gets anywhere close, in my opinion — understated but unmissable. Tiernan’s example carries that same weight. It’s not a showpiece. It’s not overly polished. Its clean, but I doubt he’d hesitate to drive it into a river or mucky field. It’s just a Land Cruiser being exactly what it was meant to be. It walks the perfect line between ‘nice to look at‘ and ‘holy shit, whats that taking up my entire rear-view mirror‘.
The plan: shoot rolling footage from the back of Dave’s Surf, its electric rear window making life easy, provided I didn’t fall out, before moving down toward The Red House for static shots. Pip and Liv came along too, so it felt like a proper crew, even if we were just a small group of friends with cameras and cars(and a miniature Pomeranian) just hangin’ out.
There’s a rhythm to filming in places you’ve known forever. You stop looking for shots, and instead, the shots seem to reveal themselves. The way light fell across the woodland that afternoon, filtering through the trees onto the Land Cruiser’s lines, felt almost staged. From the back of the Hilux, I watched the truck fill the frame, moving with a kind of slow authority down narrow country lanes that looked more like something from an old Japanese car magazine than rural Kilkenny. Thats not to say this thing is slow, a 4.2L straight-six petrol engine might do approx. 8MPG but it’ll definitely get you there quickly if you’ve got a heavy foot and a little patience for it to wind up.
By the time we reached The Red House, the shoot had settled into a flow. The sound of water rushing nearby, the texture of the stonework, the weight of the woodland pressing in around us — it all grounded the Land Cruiser in its element. Shooting there, it was less about capturing a truck and more about placing it in a story. Machine and landscape, both rugged, both timeless.
These are the days that remind me why I love doing this. Not just because of the cars — though the 80-Series deserves all the attention it gets — but because of the places, the people, and the quiet moments in between. How good does this thing look? I recall shooting some initial rollers of it, a few weeks back and remarking that no jeep would come close to how cool this thing is, just look at it!
Tiernan’s Land Cruiser feels like a continuation of that story. Built for adventure, but equally at home just sitting still in a place like this with a cold can, maybe the awning drawn out or the roof tent in action. A reminder that not everything has to move fast. Sometimes it’s enough just to be present — with the car, the camera, the place and most importantly, the people.
