I hate to weigh into this.
But as someone who still believes in the advantages of SFA, Shotts is right that Toyota recognized that IFS sells far more vehicles than SFA.
Articles were published in the 1990s in other countries that indicated that Toyota was losing Hilux sales left and right to the new IFS trucks from Isuzu and Nissan and that's why they ended up dumping the SFA in the Hilux for good.
It's pretty obvious that the vast majority of buyers of 100 series and today's 200 series vehicles are upscale buyers who are going to want the onroad advantages of IFS over SFA.
I'd have to agree that if you polled people who are of the income level to purchase a $60-70K vehicle, I'll bet you'd be hard pressed to find even a fraction of 1% that would prefer a solid axle vehicle over IFS.
It's the aftermarket, where these vehicles actually get put to use and where the demand exists for a SFA. But Toyota has zero concern for who buys their vehicles on the used car market 10 or 15 years later. It's who's going to buy them now, when they are brand new and cost the most, that matters.
Australia and similiar countries have an entirely different driving population that we do here. The country is made up of massive road systems that require a heavy duty vehicle. It's no surprise that Toyota would market SUVs and family vehicles that are built for extreme duty in extreme off road situations. Whereas here in the states, 99% of the vehicles sold including, SUVs or pick ups or otherwise, never leave pavement. And most spend their lives driving on freeways at speeds over 70 mph. So, Toyota marketers are going to offer different vehicles for different markets where the majority of buyers have different driving styles.
Frankly, we should be thankful Toyota offered the Land Cruiser 80 and 100 series here at all. Because by the time the 80 series came out, Toyota was already plotting and planning to dump it's "real" 1 ton Hilux truck in favor of a "civilizied" north American market only truck called the Tacoma, which lacked most of the heavy duty features of the the Hiliux truck that continued production for overseas markets.
The fact that we got relatively the same vehicle that was produced for overseas markets, such as the 80 and 100, is very lucky for us indeed. I've always been surprised that Toyota marketed the 80 here at all, when it clearly had no true market for it's intended use, in the price range it sold for.
I assume it was only the SUV craze of the 1990s that motivated Toyota to bring it here, at a time in American car sales, when manufactures were desperate to find anything that could be called an SUV, to sell to a public desperate for SUVs. Honda, of all manufactures, even sold a rebadged Isuzu SUV, as one of their own. I think people were eager to drive an image and that's all they cared about. Things like power, weight, drivability, fuel economy didn't matter, because there were only so many offerings. As SUVs began to populate the roads, it was only then that manufactures had to compete against each other for comfort and drivability.
I don't think the 80 series would have sold well here today or even just a few years ago, were it the current model Land Cruiser, because there would be no extensive market for a $70,000 SFA SUV with all of the modern SUV offerings at the end of the SUV craze. Even though the 80 series handles better on the road than many other IFS offerings from other manufactures, in its price class ($65-75K in today's dollars) I think Toyota would know it would have a hard time selling them. And as a large manufacture, Toyota is not in the business of selling limited supplies of extremely high end or specialized vehicles, like the Mercedes G class SUVs. They are in the business of filling it's 1500 U.S. dealers with cars and trucks and SUVs that sell in relatively high volumes.
That all said, Shotts and I part ways in the idea that SFAs don't have any advantage over IFS. I've driven both types of suspensions and I've built and modified both platforms. Both work well for different kinds of driving, including different kinds of off roading. I personally prefer the SFA of the 80 series, because it is stronger, particularly in the area of the outer joints and front axles and offers a better off roadabliity for my type of driving, while still being more than respectable on road. The 80 is also easier to modify, lift and built for more extreme use. The 80 is the culmination of decades of SFA technology and development and it handles better on the highway than many older IFS vehicles, but obviously, more modern IFS vehicles like the 100 will handle even better on the highway. I definately wouldn't mind an IFS 100 series as a daily driver. Nor would I turn down an IFS 100 series to eventually replace my 80 when the time eventually comes. The 100 series has it's advantages, but I don't support the idea that those advantages are in most off road scenarios, when compared to the 80.
I think the 100 series IFS platform is a well designed, extremely durable IFS set up as far as IFS suspension go. Toyota knew how how to build high quality IFS suspensions, as the original IFS Hilux mini-truck set up was also extremely durable, and lasted as the Hilux IFS suspension from 1986 all the way through until the redesign of the Hilux in approximately 2005. That's almost a 20 year run of a nearly unchanged suspension design. The Tacoma/Tundra set up that followed in North America had its weaknesses, however, and that's one reason it was never offered in overseas models Hiluxes and why the 100 series was modeled closer to the original torsion bar style Hilux IFS, rather than the Tacoma/Tundra coil spring design.
As already mentioned the SFA is not dead. Toyota still markets the orignal 70 series vehicles to customers in other countries that desperately want the extra durability. The Land Cruiser wagon was in a similear class of the 70 series, when it was designed along side the 60 series, but with every successive model, the wagon has diverged away from the 70 series and has been increasingly marketed towards a different type of buyer. The 200 series is the culmunation of that divergence and I think that's why Toyota saw no need to build and market a SFA version of the 200 series. And probably why Toyota gave the 70 series it's biggest design and mechanical upgrades yet, in preparation for increased sales of those models with the death of the 105 series.
