With $4-a-gallon gas, traffic congestion, and a drop in the number of long road trips we all take, some people might wonder why many of us fell in love with large SUVs in the first place.

Toyota's redone 2008 Land Cruiser is a pleasant reminder of a driving experience that I'm pretty certain will become extinct, given life as we know it now.

To its credit, the Land Cruiser, Toyota's top-of-the-line SUV, is exceedingly comfortable and relatively easy to drive despite its size. It has every convenience and luxury you can think of. It's bristling with technology to keep you safe. And it's got a vast, flexible interior.

But the reality is that the Land Cruiser gets 13 miles per gallon city and 18 highway with its 5.7-liter, 381-horsepower V-8. The government estimates the annual fuel bill at $2,801 a year. And that's based on $2.80 per gallon of gas!

At any rate, that's one of only a couple of negatives that I could come up with on what I believe to be a classy SUV. First, the Land Cruiser is remarkably rugged and stable, to the point that it feels as though you are "one" with the SUV, not simply along for the ride. That's a rare feeling, because most SUVs cause me to think it's driving me instead, to my detriment.

The Land Cruiser drives and handles like a much smaller vehicle. I had to get out and look at it again after I parked it for the first time because I thought it must be a much shorter product.

It corners pretty flat and never misbehaves, and the steering feels much lighter and better controlled than ever. Like GM's big SUVs, the Chevy Tahoe and Suburban, this is a good product for those who hate the clumsiness of SUVs.

Acceleration is pretty good, too, but the brakes could be a bit stronger, I thought, given the sheer mass of this thing.

I think the reason I felt so secure and in control of the Land Cruiser is because of a new feature -- Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System. It automatically loosens up or stiffens up the Land Cruiser's anti-roll bars, depending on how you're driving, and as a result, you don't feel any strong lean around corners. Nor do you need to make small corrections as you drive.

Needless to say, you're swathed in luxury in this truck. The leather seats are buttery smooth, and every single control is right at hand. The soft blue that Toyota chose for the dash lighting is soothing , and the steering wheel is just the right size -- not bus-huge like in other large SUVs. The Land Cruiser has three rows of seats, and you can get up to eight people inside of it. Raising the second- row seats for entry to the third row is a snap -- a one-step, one-handle operation.

Though I didn't drive it off-road, I've heard the Land Cruiser is a master at this activity. To make it even better, Toyota now has an electronic crawl control system that allows the truck to keep a set, fixed low speed in off-road territory without the driver doing anything at all.

It doesn't matter whether you're heading up a hill, or coming down, you take your foot off the accelerator and let the truck do the rest. All you have to do is steer it where you want it to go and step on brakes when the need arises.

As I said, the Land Cruiser is at the top of the heap.

But alas, the day of large and medium-size sport utilities is over, unless they eventually are powered by a hybrid engine getting at least 35 miles per gallon -- city, not highway. And that may someday doom the Land Cruiser.

Now, federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards require that the entire lineup of cars and trucks in a company's portfolio will have to average out to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2011 and 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

Most companies simply don't have enough small cars to counterbalance fuel guzzling SUVs and trucks. With falling sales and tough mileage standards, most SUVs will simply become too costly to keep in the lineup.

Like General Motors and Ford, Toyota has bet heavily on SUVs.

But unlike the two domestics, Toyota's got the cash and wherewithal to do pretty much what it wants when it comes to putting its lineup together -- and that may save the Land Cruiser if Toyota decides to do so. Toyota also has plenty of small economical cars to offset SUVs in meeting federal standards.

Still, Toyota's officials are plenty smart. They know that their bottom line won't be able to sustain hard-to-sell, fuel-thirsty SUVs forever. And as image-aware as they are, they likely won't want to keep selling SUVs when the rest of the auto world has moved on, and it becomes even more undesirable than it already is for consumers to own them.

That's why it's hard for me to imagine that Toyota will keep all of its SUVs -- RAV4, 4Runner, FJ Cruiser, Sequoia and Land Cruiser -- around for long.

Most companies, including Toyota, are far more likely to keep small, economical SUVs such as RAV4, and maybe one hybrid-powered mid-size SUV, while spending heavily to develop crossovers, which, compared to SUVs, are more comfortable, more economical, better handling and better looking.

But someday, when we're all talking about "back in the day" when SUVs were king, we'll mention the Land Cruiser as being one of the best of the lot.