Toyota Will Retrofit Round Headlights on Japan’s Land Cruiser for $1,300

Since October 21, Toyota has been swapping the rectangular headlamps on Japan’s Land Cruiser 250 VX for round ones after delivery, a factory-backed conversion that costs 204,600 yen, or about $1,300, with the labor included.

The round lamps are the same retro look that the Land Cruiser 1958 wears in the United States, and the job is done at Toyota dealers rather than in an aftermarket shop. It goes beyond bolting on two new lights, because the front bumper has to come off and go back on, and the vehicle’s control unit has to be reprogrammed to run the new lamps.

The program comes from Toyota Upgrade Factory, the automaker’s retrofit service that is run by its KINTO subsidiary, which announced the "Headlamp Design Customization (Round Lamps)" item on October 21 and said it was available from that day at dealers in all 47 of Japan’s prefectures. The price includes tax and installation. The service covers the VX grade, including the VX First Edition, built from April 2024 onward, which takes in both the original trucks and the ones built after the April 2026 running change. Owners apply on the Upgrade Factory website with their vehicle registration details, and the dealer they choose then calls or emails to set a drop-off date. Toyota said that changing the headlamp design greatly changes the impression of the front end, and it pitched the round lamps as a way to evoke earlier Land Cruisers while keeping modern lighting.

Autoevolution reported that the conversion works out to roughly $1,300 at current exchange rates, against a Japanese sticker price of 5,779,400 yen, or about $36,560, for the VX, and that Toyota designed the kit for customers who like the round lamps sold in other markets. The same announcement added a second retrofit, a fifth-generation wireless phone charger for 28,600 yen installed, which has twice the charging area of the previous unit and supports faster charging. Car Watch noted that the charger is limited to VX models built between April 2024 and March 2026, except for diesel First Edition trucks that already have one, and to gasoline VX models from the April 2026 update on.

American buyers already get to pick between the two faces, just not after the fact. The round LED headlamps and the "TOYOTA" lettered grille belong to the Land Cruiser 1958, which starts at $57,880 for 2027, while the better-equipped Land Cruiser grade at $62,725 wears the rectangular lamps. Toyota has announced the Upgrade Factory swap only for Japan.

The choice carries a safety angle, too. In the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s testing of the 2025-2027 Land Cruiser, the 1958’s round LED projector headlights rated Good, while the Land Cruiser grade’s rectangular units rated Marginal because low-beam glare exceeded the threshold on some of the curves tested.

The Toyota Report Take

Toyota is monetizing the one thing everybody argued about when the Land Cruiser came back, and at around $1,300 for a dealer-installed swap it will find plenty of takers among Japanese owners who bought the loaded VX and then wished for the cheap truck’s face. The more interesting question is why this exists in Japan and not here, where the round-lamp 1958 is the car people photograph and the Land Cruiser grade is the one with the better equipment and, according to IIHS, the worse headlights. A factory kit that let a Land Cruiser grade owner have the retro look and the Good-rated lamps would sell itself, and Toyota already has the parts on the shelf.

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