With this facelift, Toyota has addressed some lack of features in the pre-facelift Fortuner
Toyota will finally launch its premium seven-seater SUV in India after months of its international reveal. Fortuner has been the most popular premium seven-seat SUV in India for over a decade now. Although it did miss out on some modern gizmos it does tick the boxes on most attributes that an SUV of its category should.
2021 Fortuner Facelift was launched earlier last year in international markets such as Thailand, Australia and Indonesia. As mentioned in our previous reports, Fortuner has been made available in two trims- standard and Legender. The latter is a more premium version of the SUV which was recently spotted on roads of Bangalore.
Toyota will be offering Fortuner Facelift across nine variants which includes one variant of Legender while the rest belong to standard trim. When it comes to its exterior design- Legender comes as a shaper-looking model in comparison to the regular Fortuner Facelift.
The latter receives a mild facelift with a handful of cosmetic and feature updates while Legender is a whole new beast. Ahead of launch, Toyota India has now officially teased the Fortuner and Legender, also confirming its higher torque output of 500 Nm.
Exterior Styling
The Fortuner Facelift flaunts a larger front grille in comparison to its predecessor with silver inserts. It gets a revised front bumper with a larger silver skid plate, LED projector headlamps and revised fog lamp housings. It rides on newly designed 18-inch alloy wheels. Legender, on the other hand, receives a smaller blacked-out grille and flaunts a sharp Bi-projector LED headlamps with LED DRLs and redesigned front bumper which gives it an edgier look.
The Toyota logo is placed a bit lower than usual in Legender. It also receives a larger air intake with a smaller skid plate and different fog lamp housings than the standard model. Also, Legender rolls on larger 20-inch alloy wheels. The regular Fortuner also misses out on sequential LED taillights which are offered on the more premium version of it. The Legender also comes with dual-tone colour scheme with a metallic black roof which is given a miss on the regular variant.
Interior & Features on offer
Coming to its interiors, the regular Fortuner Facelift comes with two interior colour options- Black and Chamois whereas Legender is offered in a solitary dual-tone theme with black and maroon. Being a premium version, Legender is more feature rich than the standard Fortuner.
This includes more premium leather upholstery, 360-degree parking camera, wireless phone charger, larger 9.0-inch touchscreen infotainment unit and lots more. The standard model gets an 8.0-inch unit which now features Android Auto, Apple CarPlay and Toyota’s in-car connectivity tech T-Connect.
Powertrain, Transmission Options
As far as powertrain goes, it is offered with the same set of units- a 2.7-litre petrol unit and 2.8-litre unit V-GD turbo diesel engine. The former pushes out 166 bhp and 245 Nm of peak torque. The latter gets a bump in output and now kicks out 204 bhp and 500 Nm of peak torque. The standard trim is offered with both powertrain options while Legender is offered only with the diesel unit.
A 6-speed automatic transmission is standard whereas the petrol unit gets a 5-speed manual and the diesel unit gets a 6-speed manual as an option. A 4×4 drivetrain with a low-range transfer case is offered on the diesel unit as an option on the standard trim only. It continues to rival other premium SUVs such as Ford Endeavour and MG Gloster.
