This is not the sort of Toyota you’re used to driving. Louder, with more rattles, it is the roughneck Toyota that doesn’t care if you and your rear get a little jostled. In other words, Highlander this ain’t, bubba, and it's a good thing, too: to make the 2007 FJ Cruiser a smooth riding, quiet suburban machine would be like dressing a marine in a tutu.

It seems clear to us that Toyota’s goals with the 2007 FJ Cruiser were power, off-road prowess, and style inside/out. Then, maybe, way down at the bottom of the chief engineer’s scratch pad, something about making it quiet and smooth, and meeting Toyota’s Golden Rule #1: make cars so vault-like that competitors scratch their heads and wonder, how? Of course, Toyota being Toyota, they can’t help but try to make even this, the ultimate SUV that doesn’t need to be perfect, well, perfect. So they put speakers in the roof. All that mumbo-jumbo talk of technology? Yeah, yeah. Of course it’s advanced. But then maybe it’s as advanced as one Toyota engineer saying to another: Hey, dude, it’s still too loud inside the cab. Maybe we should put speakers inside the headliner?

Music drowns out a lot of sins, though the 4.0-liter V6 engine is hardly a crime. A nice engine courtesy of the 4Runner/truck line, the V6 makes 239 horsepower and 278 pound-feet of torque, power that feels right at home pulling the FJ Cruiser. It’s nicely powered for off- and on-road driving, and, according to Toyota, can tow up to 5,000 lbs. That’s more power than a Hummer H3, though slightly less than a new Xterra. Though we didn’t get much time with the FJ Cruiser off the paved road – and the course we did attempt was generally beginner grade – the FJ Cruiser reportedly can do whatever you ask of it off-road. Check back later for a more detailed off-road analysis, however, as we flog the thing up the sides of mountains and through deep, cold rivers. We may even cross the Mohave Desert in the thing, if we’re up for a road trip, because Toyota makes us feel as though the FJ Cruiser is invincible, and no one in the business has said otherwise...yet.

The highway is a different - yawn - story. Let’s face it: you’re either buying the FJ because you want to go off-road, or because you want to pretend that you go off-road. Either way, Bunky, you don’t care what it drives like down Main Street, right? You should. Because without the right combination of braking capability and power, of steering response and feel, the opportunity for accidents goes way up. So in the things that matter, the FJ Cruiser seems to do fine. Its wide track gives it a solid feel for the pavement, the steering is responsive, and the engine is a nice match. The stand-up straight windshield and command seating up front give the driver a feeling of control, though people in the back are left with the impression that they’ve just stumbled into a dark, plastic place. And about loading those people: the suicide doors are a pain. Try letting someone out of the back while still buckled in the front. It’s a real squeeze, which brings us right back around to the 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser: if you want it to be your main car squeeze, buy the six-speed manual, get the 4x4 if you can, and try to avoid sitting in the back seat.