Japan’s Land Cruiser features body-colored taillight covers. The functional lights are mounted on the rear bumper. The lighting setup satisfies visibility rules in certain markets. The Toyota Land Cruiser 70 Series is an automotive oddity, in continuous production since 1984 with a string of updates spread across the decades. Its most recent facelift brought back the iconic round headlights, a welcome bit of nostalgia, but it also handed the Japanese market something stranger: body-colored covers where the taillights ought to be. So why did Toyota commit to a design that hides its own rear lamps? Blame the Rulebook The answer sits in local safety and homologation rules across markets like Japan and Europe. Those regulations require that the rear combination lamps are unobstructed when the truck is viewed from certain side angles, and when the rear door hatch is open. More: Toyota’s Shortest Land Cruiser Has A Windshield That Folds Flat For Throwing Lassos The catch is the spare. Because the Land Cruiser hangs its full-sized spare tire on the rear swing door, that tire blocks the high-mounted pillar lights from certain angles. Rather than redesign the sheet metal, Toyota dropped the working lights down to the rear bumper. The Japanese-spec Land Cruiser 70 Series (top) compared to the Australian-spec model (bottom). In some places, like Australia, those lower units run alongside functional upper taillights. Buyers in Japan and other Asian markets get the body-colored louvered dummy panels instead. More: Toyota Brings Back The 1980s Land Cruiser 70 While the Japanese Land Cruiser 70 Series only got the dummy units in late 2023, this design workaround has a long history within the Land Cruiser family. Bumper-mounted primary lighting appeared on select export variants such as the European-spec LJ70s from the late 1980s. On those, the brake lights and indicators lived in the bumper while body cutouts handled secondary duties. Can It Get Fixed? Since Toyota uses the same body pressings across its global production lines, undoing the dummy setup has become a popular aftermarket job. Recent demonstrations from a custom shop in Thailand called Toms Gear show that JDM-spec Land Cruiser 70s keep the factory mounting points hidden behind the blanking covers. The complication is the wiring. Since the factory leaves no active light circuit behind the dummy plates, installers have to run jumper wires from the lower bumper up into the quarter panels. More: The Land Cruiser 70 Was Built For The Outback, Toyota Just Made One For The City Once that wiring reaches up, the rest is straightforward. Technicians unscrew the factory dummy plates, connect the leads to genuine taillight assemblies pulled from global-spec models, and bolt the housings into place. The mod restores full illumination to the upper pillars and gives the truck the rear-lighting look it was drawn with in the first place. Other Automakers Have Done The Same Thing The Land Cruiser 70 is not the only model to feature this design workaround. Suzuki famously adopted bumper-mounted primary lighting on multiple generations of the Jimny, Vitara, and Grand Vitara, leaving upper body cutouts either as non-functional reflectors or blank panels to ensure tailgate-mounted spare tires did not block visibility. More: This Mini Land Cruiser 70 Series Clone Costs Less Than You Think A similar trick was employed in the Mitsubishi Pajero, Nissan Patrol, and Isuzu Trooper / Rodeo off-roaders. Even European models got in on it, with the original Land Rover Freelander parking its primary rear lights in the bumper to keep the tailgate spare from blocking visibility. Toyota
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