Article by: RobRed

Applicable Models: 1998-2007 / 100 Series Land Cruiser or LX470

Last updated: May 1, 2015 at 14:12 pm

I’m driving a 13 year old Land Cruiser. It’s worn but in great shape overall. It’s previous home in Oregon and the owners diligence to factory recommended maintenance gave it a great start in life. My updates and continuous fiddling should keep her on the road for a long time. One area of the 100 series that you can’t save (if you use the truck) is the interior. It will wear. The leather seats, in particular the drivers, as well as the carpeting will see the hands of time move forward and one day leave you with the sense to patch or repair. In my case I’m pretty fortunate, the drivers seat is still in decent shape and the carpets are still very serviceable. The previous owner had the good sense to use the Toyota factory carpeted floor mats which has preserved the carpets pretty well. My beef with the carpeted floor mats, though they look nice, is they have no control of debris or dirt coming into the truck. They get pretty crappy – pretty quick when you’re out in the back country using a Land Cruiser for it’s intended purpose.

In previous vehicles I have always run rubber floor mats for ease of cleaning. Recent years vehicles I have run OEM all weather floor mats providing even more protection than plain ole rubber. When I acquired my 2000 Land Cruiser in 2011 I immediately sought our the Toyota OEM all weather mats. Scouring the Internet and local dealers – none to be found. Becuase some less than skillful drivers managed to get there floor mats caught in the accelerators of their Toyota vehicles, Toyota opted to recall their OEM floor mats from all sales channels and redesign them. Well a 12 year old vehicle is not on the top of the list so no revised LC mats. I suspect in some warehouse, somewhere in Japan, a million new LC floor mats are stored because they have been classified as dangerous.

This situation leaves the aftermarket to fill the gap. I scoured the web to locate a suitably tough / all weather mat set and kept coming back to WeatherTech. WeatherTech was founded in 1989 (McNeil Automotive Products) and has developed a good market presence both in consumer and OEM applications. I felt pretty comfortable with them as a brand and soon found myself on their website placing an order.

The order process is very straight forward and the website lays out the options very well. First I needed to choose a style of floor mat; Floor Liner DigitalFit or their All Weather Floor Mats. The DigitalFit style liners have high sides that are custom measured and fit the vehicle precisely through digital laser measurements of interior surfaces. These “liners” have a rigid core for strength and have channels that carry fluid and debris, away from shoes and clothing, into a lower reservoir. The lower reservoir uses additional channeling to minimize fluid movement while driving. Once fluids become trapped in the reservoir, they are easily removed from the over the door sill.

For me I didn’t find the style of the DigitalFit liner as appealing as a conventional floor mat. Frankly I doubt I would ever take advantage of the additional protection offered by the tall sides and special channels so I looked and the other option and I choose the All-Weather mats.

Both the DigitalFit and All-Weather products have all three rows of protection available and a cargo liner as well. I have the third row removed and a drawer setup in the cargo area so I purchased the front and second row All-Weather floor mats. Though the front floor mats are cut and shaped to fit the Land Cruiser well the rear All-Weather floor mats are a “trim to fit” system. I was a tad disappointed at this situation as these floor mats are what I consider premium priced.

The All-Weather floor mats are made out of an odorless compound, that have deeply sculpted channels designed to trap water, mud and sand.  WeatherTech states that the “proprietary engineered resin ensures that these mats will not curl, crack or harden in sub-zero weather.”  The All-Weather floor mats also have anti-skid ridges and a non-stick finish to aid cleanup. The All-Weather floor mats are available in black, tan or grey to match the LC/LX interior.

For the second row All-Weather mats I needed to trim them. As I said I was disappointed that I needed to do this on a $100 set of floor mats but I soon got over it as it was a 5-10 minute process. I laid out my carpeted second row mat to use as a visual template to see what I needed to trim. I also laid out the All-Weather mats in the truck to gauge fit.  I grabbed a fresh razor knife and went to work. The All-Weather mats do have score lines to aid in the trimming process and they are easy to cut through.

Though initially I had some reservations and not thrilled to have to trim the rear mats myself I got over that very quickly and have been enjoying the quality and usefulness of these floor mats. They stay in place with everyday use and are super easy to clean if they get soiled. The 2nd row mats don’t quite have the same coverage as the OEM carpeted mat – it has a wider base that gives coverage all the way to the door rear door sills. I think that WeatherTech has lived up to the build quality promised, the order process was painless and delivery was a reasonable 5 business days (ground shipping IL to CA).

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