Ever look at what a particular replacement part costs and have your eyeballs attempt to achieve escape velocity from your skull? I guess it’s fairly routine for cars known for ridiculous complexity, but occasionally a manufacturer equips a piece on a vehicle with an anvil-like reputation that feels outrageously expensive. I just about went into sticker shock when I saw what the optional SDM front sway bar on the new Toyota Land Cruiser costs to replace, because it makes some suspension parts for notoriously complex European posh off-roaders look downright affordable by comparison.
As you’ve likely surmised, this part’s a little special compared to what’s probably on your daily driver. The available front sway bar on the Land Cruiser features a disconnect mechanism for increased off-road articulation when disconnected and improved on-road handling over no sway bar with it connected. It’s nothing hugely wild, and a reasonable $1,250 option when buying a new rig, so it feels like the sort of gadget you’d be amiss to do without.
Unfortunately, if you ever need to replace it for any non-warranty reason, such as a collision or the rare case of damaging it (although you’d have to mess up pretty much an entire corner of suspension components before sway bar damage occurs) off-roading, this seemingly mundane part costs an absolute fortune to replace if purchased new.
If we plug part number 48860-35011 into the Toyota parts catalog, which is the remote-disconnect front sway bar for the Land Cruiser and Tacoma, into Toyota’s parts catalog, it spits back a frankly absurd list price. This suspension component will run you $9,847.14 at full sticker price, nearly $10,000 for a $1,250 factory option.
How much margin is built into that price? Well, one dealer in Rhode Island has the sway bar marked down to $6,525.66, but I certainly wouldn’t assume that’s the price most dealers are charging across the country. It’s possible that some dealerships have inventory they’re looking to clear out, some dealerships have to order it in but will offer a discount from list price, and some dealerships will charge you the full $9,847.14.
Keep in mind, this isn’t some sort of ultra-fancy hydraulic or high-voltage active anti-roll bar like you might see on some German luxury SUVs, but instead a relatively simple mechanical disconnect mechanism like what’s available on the Jeep Wrangler or the Ford Bronco. Actually, if we pull up Ford’s parts catalog, the remote-disconnect front sway bar for the Bronco Badlands carries an MSRP of $1,873.33, and is discounted to $1,779.66 if I select Galpin on the dealer locator. Still a pricey sway bar, but nowhere near what Toyota’s charging for its remote-disconnect sway bar.
In fact, you can buy an entire Land Cruiser for what Toyota’s charging for the full list price of this sway bar. Not a new Land Cruiser, but nevertheless an entire functional vehicle. Check out this 2001 Land Cruiser up for sale in Iowa. Sure, it may be the better part of a quarter-century old and have 233,337 miles on the clock, but it looks pretty clean for its age, has period-correct gold-plated emblems, and carries an asking price of $9,600. That’s an entire full-size V8-powered Land Cruiser for the price of an available sway bar on a new Prado.
Now granted, a failed sway bar should be covered under warranty, and it would take a serious impact to actually damage the SDM front sway bar on the new Land Cruiser, but a near-five-figure bill just for the part seems outrageous. It’s possible there’s some effort here on Toyota’s part to deter owners without the bar from slapping it on their base-model rigs, but if a vehicle equipped with this piece of chassis technology gets in a wreck and the SDM sway bar is somehow damaged, that repair estimate is going to the moon.
Anyway, compared to the official cost of a replacement part, ticking the box for the remote-disconnecting front sway bar on the new Toyota Land Cruiser sounds like a bargain, yeah? Just make sure you be mindful of it, because although it’s possible pricing may come down in a few years, right now, it’s a big thing to replace.
Top graphic images: Toyota
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Could this just be a setup error?
Sometimes when we were developing new products, we would assign part numbers for different variants. Retail packaged versions got a number, bulk packed for OEMs would get a different one, variants for specific oems with their preferred electrical connector (AMP, Deutsch, etc). The specific oem variants were exclusive to those oems, who had contract pricing for those items. To prevent anyone from fat-fingering an order for the wrong part number, I would set a very high price on those items so it would get their attention.
That doesn’t seem like a very Toyota way of doing things, but it is possible that the system pricing has just never been corrected from the initial setup.
Toyota and Lexus dealerships don’t really stock uncommon parts in their parts departments. The Toyota parts distribution system allows for virtually any available parts to arrive overnight to any dealership. Nearly every dealership gets parts shipments daily also.
Parts have the most extreme markup of anything at the dealership. You hear about sales… They make WAY less off people than we all think. You hear about service… sure dealers sometimes cost more but often don’t… BUT PARTS. You don’t hear about parts!
The way dealerships operate is each department is its own business. So the parts departments usually charge the sales and service departments full retail.
My favorite example of this is ALL WEATHER FLOOR LINERS. You know, those silly mats that actually look dirtier and keep your car dirtier so you can save your carpeted floor mats that you will never use that were designed to do the same thing better and not appear disgusting at all times with dust and footprints… Those liners are like $180 wholesale and the dealership will charge customers INCLUDING SALES DEPARTMENTS around $400-500 for those liners.
The two biggest rackets at car dealerships? Parts departments and certified pre-owned vehicles. CPO vehicles seem like a good deal to risk averse people, but are really just racketeering from manufacturers to squeeze more money out of dealers on cars they already made money on selling and servicing. I think in the future CPO may be illegal how it’s done currently. Consumers overpay for a CPO vehicle versus a brand new vehicle consistently. Sure there are good deals to be had, but look around at CPO offerings and you will see they are largely not a good value.
That’s great that the Ford part is so much less expensive than the Toy Yoda, but…who the f has 355,000 FordPass reward points?
Hit a deer at expressway speeds two weeks ago in my 2023 Ford Lightning.
All damage was to the front end. No frame damage, no airbag deployment, no suspension damage. My insurance company wrote it off as a total loss with $23,000 estimate.
I loved the truck and enjoyed having a nice vehicle that I didn’t have to repair but I can’t justify the cost to replace it. As the saying goes, the cheapest car is usually the one you already own. I’ve spent the last two weekends and some evenings getting my 26 yr old 2500 suburban on the road. At 12mpg I would have to drive over 2,500 miles a month to offset the payment and insurance on a new Lightning.
… 12MPG must be nice. My 2001 Yukon XL never once hit 11 in the 3 years I owned it. (At least it never got below 7mpg when towing a 9K enclosed trailer unlike most modern non-diesel trucks)
Yet more proof that buying a more complex vehicle than you need is not a smart financial decision.
These have started to predictably show up in the hands of some of the more well-off around here and some already have those Cuuuute looking roof racks and other shit to try and convince everyone they’re going off roading any day now.
Those are the people who turn on their amber fogs when it’s mildly overcast on their expedition to Costco National Park.
And we wonder why our car insurance costs have gotten out of hand.
This. Tap the back end of a Rivian and your insurance company is out 80 grand. I think minimum liability in my state is $50k. Someone on that policy would on the hook for $30k of that.
Thats why I will take the J100 over this….patch up whatever is there assuming its rust free and it will be ready to go..
The V8 simply feels a lot stronger…I drove a 200 series as a rental (different, but still gets the point)…
Well now. Come on. A single BMW “laser” headlight is $5500 with all possible rebates, $7000+ msrp.
At least this thing has some metal in it.
“It’s possible there’s some effort here on Toyota’s part to deter owners without the bar from slapping it on their base-model rigs,”
This type of BS is why my default position on MBAs is “fire them into the sun until proven innocent.”
“We might not be the best people…
but we’re not the worst…
graduate students are the worst”
-30 Rock
Toyota “Tax” is a real thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hopefully it’s tucked up out of the way so it doesn’t hit anything in the new LC’s primary terrain… the mall parking lot.
Auto disconnecting sway bars need to go away. They’re expensive and needlessly complicated. I know the Grand Cherokee Trailhawks are needing them replaced constantly due to clunks. And most owners regardless of brand of the high end off roady models will never need to disconnect it- go to a manual one for those that really need it.
I always felt like a “quick-disconnect sway bar” (akin to mountain bike wheels or seats) would be a nice option, just a 180-degree turn with a special tool or something. IMHO, it seems like anyone knowledgeable enough to need a swaybar disconnected would be willing to take that step in exchange for less stuff that can break. Just plan ahead if there’s mud or snow or whatever. This may already exist, but I live in the land of private property owners with lots of guns, so wheeling isn’t as prevalent as the West.
I had manual ones from the aftermarket on my XJ. Pull two pins, zip tie the links out of the way and hit the trail. Nothing you shouldn’t be able to do if you’re also airing down tires and prepping your rig.
some are better than others. I had trouble with mine on an zj. I am installing some better ones on my JK this weekend.
I ran JKS on my ZJ. They were great when new, but became increasingly difficult to use, and they were always loosening up. I ended up tossing them and going back to OE style links and unbolting them when I wanted to disco.
I am not sure what I was running on my zj it was 20 years ago whatever it was bound up and snapped the tab off the axle. After that was welded up it was better.
It can be a pain if level ground is hard to find, but with level ground does take about a minute to deal with, at 1/10 the cost.
Another benefit I found with the adjustable, aftermarket disconnects was when I was hit with some debris on the interstate, and one of the sway bar axle brackets got bent upwards a bit. I just shortened up the disconnect link on that side to match the new geometry, and called it good.
Toyota had (has) a better system already in KDSS, but this is a features market and this feature has more sales appeal.
I don’t know…the Jeep system has some issues.
The Power Wagon’s sway bar seems to be much better built- I haven’t heard of issues about this, and I have seen some PWs here in Qatar.
Not only is this shocking for the scenarios you mentioned, but even more so for the aggregate impact it has on insurance for two reasons:
One, increase premiums for everyone driving this vehicle (or, if it’s like Allstate, any vehicle that even slightly resembles it could be rolled into a single actuarial cohort and penalize anyone with an SUV and they’ll never even know…)
Two, the fact that an unfortunate front-end collision after 5-7 years could easily total the car, which is completely insane. Over the past couple decades I’ve spoken at length with my agent (who is a 35-year veteran and surprisingly candid) as she’s watched the bulk of insurance premiums shift from personal injury, then to total loss cost, then to partial loss cost. Partial losses are so expensive now, totalling is now way too common. I really wish manufacturers would acknowledge this more, but it’s not high on their priority list.
In the meantime, giving us “insurance bands” as a shopping tool for comparing cars would be a nice step. We have these ridiculously convoluted Monroney stickers, but insurance is still a matter of “tell us the exact VIN and we’ll give you an answer.” That’s messed up.
And it wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel, the British have had insurance groups for at least 30 years.
Exactly my case study here 🙂 Insurance agents will tell you that too much goes into the decision, but my response is just “Yes, but tell me how each car compares to the other cars, all else being held constant.” That data is out there, they just don’t want us to have it because it makes the market more transparent.
It’s part of my philosophy I half-jokingly call “sociolibertarianism” — imagine a government that heavily regulates industries exactly so we can have a free market with good information. It sounds paradoxical, but it’s really not.
So the way the Toyota parts inventory system works is that all parts are stored in one of several facilities unless a specific dealer order parts from those inventories for their own supply. When you look for a part number in their inventory it is cross connected to all other dealers and facilities. i.e. they treat all inventory as a single stockpile. A lot of dealers do this thing with their parts department where they just apply a blanket discount on parts. That doesn’t mean they have the parts and it doesn’t really reveal much about margin. i.e. if I order that dealer in providence they will drop ship it from wherever they have one. If the dealer is willing to honor the price, they may actually have to take a hit on it.
Long way to say that no one likely has this part “in stock” and that any prices you see online for stuff like this is probably just a product of a blanket policy covering all parts that may or may not be valid.
As for the price of the parts – yeah its still nuts. Some Toyota parts are REALLY expensive OE. In fact I would say Toyota ranks up there with the most expensive parts. Sometimes its because its a really high quality part, and sometimes I think its just because they don’t want to carry a large inventory and make it prohibitively expensive to replace so people just…don’t.
Look up 48910-60020. Go ahead and look me in the eye Toyota and tell me this is a $2600 compressor pump. I dare you.
I suspected this was the case. Front end of my GR86 was wiped out from a spinning moron on the highway and it took almost 2 months to fix, mostly waiting for parts that have to come from the OEM. PCV? Almost 2 weeks with uncertain delivery. Subaru? In stock anywhere (also, the oil filters are far more expensive from Toyota). Yeah, I get that it’s really a Subaru (thankfully!—Toyota could manage to make a night with Monica Bellucci boring), but looking for parts in general for others and a Camry I had briefly before this made me suspect they just have a few large, regional DCs where they hold all but the most common consumable parts and that their parts prices are high. Anyway, if you have a twin, get the parts from Subaru when possible.
How do prices change over time? Given just about all LC’s are under warranty still, does that influence pricing for certain larger components? Was there ever a point where that Bronco sway bar was much more than it currently is?