No disgreement here, Dave. I have no doubt that the Grenadier is the most solid platform to build from on the market today, with a possible nod over to the Wrangler/Gladiator in second place due to the sheer volume of aftermarket support (but the base quality is always Jeep, so that cuts the bottom out a bit). And as usual I'm speaking from a Canadian perspective as our market here is a bit different than it is in the rest of the world.
I don't think the Grenadier should be cheap, but I do acknowledge that it's gone from "nothing else on the market is close" when it was first announced to having similar vehicles nipping at it's heels. When the Grenadier was announced, the Land Cruiser was retreating from North America, the New Defender was a major disappointment, and the toys from Jeep and Ford were just that - Toys. Since then, we've got the new Bronco, the Gladiator, a Diesel Wrangler that folks begged and pleaded for for decades, and now a new Land Cruiser for North America, as well as significant strides by the toys like the Taco, 4Runner (maybe) and Ranger, so the market looks a lot different now than it did a few years ago.
I think you nailed it in terms of preference -- the real question is what kind of a truck does a guy really need to build? For a typical well-spec'd adventure vehicle, you need a few bits and bobs that will be available for both the Gren and the Land Cruiser and more or less bolt them on. Get behind the wheel, have an adventure, and then park it 'till the next one (or in between use it as the grocery getter). Repeat for 5-7 years then trade it for the next one. From this perspective I don't see anything that a Grenadier can do that this new Land Cruiser 250 cannot do from a high level (in other words, both are off road trucks that should be pretty robust most of the time); the devil will be in the details. How much volume? How much weight? How easy are those bolt-on bits and bobs to get bolted on? How much will this cost out the door? We have somewhat of an answer to that last question, and the gap at this stage appears pretty big, so then the question for the buyer becomes "Is the Grenadier worth X dollars more than the Land Cruiser, and
why?"
I think that last question is an important one for me. Is the Gren worth the extra $$ because it can carry a bit more weight? For the money I save, I can buy lighter equipment so if we're talking 100 lbs, that's a wash and my answer is likely "nah". If we're talking a thousand pounds -- well, aluminum bumpers and titanium cutlery only goes so far! Personally, the big differentiator in the Gren is the robustness -- I want a vehicle that I can pass on to my kid in 20 years time. I think the design of the Gren suggests that it will be that kind of vehicle -- but the Land Cruiser has proven to be that kind of vehicle too, which is why I think this latest entry by Toyota is a fair comparator.
In terms of pricing, I was referring to this new NA-spec Land Cruiser they've just announced; Toyota is talking about this new Land Cruiser 250 as being in at around the mid-$50s USD; I reckon that would put it around the mid-$60s for one with a few options ticked. I'm not sure how many big macs that is but it's less than a Grenadier
Of course that brings out a different questions - is this 250 only going to be available in the NA Market? Does that include Canada (Something tells me "no"!). If this is going to only be in the USA, then it's viability as a "world" platform is in question, and candidly I think it would give Toyota an excuse to take shortcuts on the robustness given the typical use case in the USA of a 4x4 (think shopping malls and largely well-known trails, as compared to a "normal" land cruiser being rode hard and put away wet on a mine site in the middle of the jungle)
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