The poll is closed (please help close it Admins, tks)
Alright, now that I've closed the polls and also voted myself, the answer is....
2004
This 2004 photo is of the winning concept design proposal in 1:1 full-scale clay (model), for the 200-Series development program. It's not a real vehicle, but a life-size mockup made of clay and painted/coated in dinoc film. Notice how there are no windows? Because there is no interior, it's just a block of clay, smoothed out over a few months.
In January of 2002, after careful planning as early as 2001 and studying of the 100-series market performance/competition, during the turn of millennium, Toyota teams began development of the 200-Series Land Cruiser.
By early
2004, the internal design competition concluded in this final choice. Later in 2004, the design was fully cubed after significant wind tunnel testing by Toyota design engineers and achieved Level: Design Freeze. This point is where the vehicle design in development for all intents and purposes is the production model, that you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. Difference is, most of these lifesize mockups are in clay or fiberglass.
2004 -- 1:1 Scale Design Freeze Mockup of Final Design 200-Series Land Cruiser
Yes 2004, not 2006 (no shade LOL). Those who guessed 2002, were a bit ahead of themselves, but still had the right idea, since development began in 2002.
I'm curious why so many chose 2006, really interesting.
🕵️♂️Actually in 2006, both the Toyota USA mid-level staff and dealer principals (and associates) were first shown the 2008 Land Cruiser behind closed doors at conferences and the first leak of a full prototype (one of the biggest ever), was in Oman in September 2006.
When you have something testing at that stage, usually there's at least 1 1/2 years behind that design being final. All the final components were there (shockingly). The amount of time spent to develop the Land Cruiser often dwarfs the majority of the Toyota lineup, Supra and LS not withstanding (as well LFA lol).
The 200-Series was revealed in September of 2007, as production began for JDM launch that November.
For anyone that chose 2008 as their final choice, I can only imagine there might have been confusion on my vagueness of the photo origins. Interestingly, the taillights on that concept proposal, ended up on he LX 570 in some form and/or were revisited in 2010 at Toyota Studios, when designing the first set of 200-Series updates for 2012.