Win and Pick Your Side: Toyota vs Nissan

A savage automotive rivalry has come to Mater Cars for Cancer with Lottery No. 109 giving you the chance the settle an age-old question—Toyota LandCruiser or Nissan Patrol? But you’ve got to enter the draw for the chance to win and pick your side.

A few years ago, Mater Cars for Cancer lotteries alternated regularly between hot Holdens and fast Fords, tapping a rivalry as old as the Australian car industry itself. With the big, beloved Aussies long-gone, you’d be forgiven for thinking there are no other major machines to debate about, but that isn’t so.

Whether it’s the school yard or at the front bar, Aussies have always had an opinion as black-and-white as a chessboard. So, what’s the latest debate now that we’re deep into the twenty-first century? X-box versus PlayStation? Android versus Apple? Well, yeah they’re actually pretty relevant. But there’s another, more automotive-themed rivalry that’s been simmering for as long, or perhaps longer, than the Holden versus Ford argument.

I’m talking about Toyota LandCruiser versus Nissan Patrol, both popular, capable mainstays of the Aussie motoring scene. Each is adept at urban assaulting, hardcore off-roading, and towing an all-terrain caravan, but you only have to spy the odd, tonque-in-cheek ‘LandCruiser recovery vehicle’ sticker slapped on a Patrol, or the opposite ‘Patrol recovery vehicle’ on a LandCruiser to know there’s conflict simmering just below the surface of any rocky backroad.

Cars for Cancer Lottery No, 109 gives you the chance to put your foot down and pick a side. The lucky winner will receive the choice of a 300-Series Toyota LandCruiser or a 2022 Nissan Patrol Ti, opening up an entire nation of possibilities for work, rest and play. Not only that, a 2022 Hurricane RV Family Tuff Rider ATV caravan will be set up behind your new rig, regardless of which side you pick, along with cashable gold bullion to bring the prize to an even $300k value. Give yourself the chance and purchase a ticket in Lottery 109.

The 2022 Hurricane RV is built in Melbourne to exacting standards and is capable of some pretty hairy off-road shenanigans thanks to its independent, trailing arm coil suspension and galvanised chassis. Plus, you can take the whole crew with you with a queen bed and triple bunks.

The caravan is a given; win the prize and you win the van; simple. But what to tow it with? The 2022 Toyota LandCruiser Sahara 300-Series is the latest in a long line of off-roaders that helped open up the Australian Outback over the last seven decades. Last year’s launch of the 300-series was a major milestone for the marque, bringing all the tech, safety and efficiency you’d expect from a modern four-wheel-drive wagon.

The current Nissan Patrol Ti pre-dates the 300-series by a few years, but regular updates have kept it fresh into the 2020s, and a long way from the first Patrol which debuted in 1951—coincidentally the same year as the LandCruiser. Introduced here in 1960, the Nissan Patrol, like its arch nemesis helped crack open our nation’s unforgiving red centre, conquering the seemingly impossible with nothing more than a strong, well-engineered, and reliable unit.

As much both the 300-series Toyota LandCruiser and the 2022 Nissan Patrol Ti have changed and improved over the decades, their shared philosophies of strength, engineering and reliability have not. Just like Holden and Ford before them, each brand has its backers and its knockers, and just like their extinct Aussie brethren, the differences are generally academic. It all boils down to which side you pick, so to have your say and earn the right to display a disparaging bumper sticker, make sure you enter the Lottery 109.

There can only be one winner, yet the odds of winning are higher than you’d expect. Lottery 109 is capped at 50,000 entries; there’s surely a few church raffles out there with inferior odds. And if you don’t get to pick a side and ride off into the sunset in the fourby of your choice, take heart. You’ll still be contributing to improving the lives of those living with cancer, as well as funding research that aims to cure it. I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s a side we all want to pick.

*Credit: Images of LandCruiser and Patrol supplied by WhichCar