Why the 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser offers both rectangular and round headlights

The 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser offers folks a choice in headlight design the likes of which we don’t typically see in new cars. While most vehicles these days will let you choose between a standard and upgrade headlight, the Land Cruiser lets you choose between two entirely different headlight designs: round or rectangular.

The round comes on the base 1958 trim, and as you’d expect, the design is a throwback to that first Land Cruiser that hit U.S. shores in 1958. It’s a retro look that fans of older Land Cruisers are likely to adore.

“The round headlights, they’re just charming,” Kevin Hunter, president of Toyota’s CALTY Design tells us. “As we got into it, we realized, hey, there’s an opportunity here to call back some of the cool design elements we have, so we made the round headlight.”

But what about the rectangular lights on the “Land Cruiser” trim? Engineering a second setup for a single model’s headlights is not a cheap or typical thing to do, so we asked Toyota why. The answer was fairly simple.

“We thought more charm (gesturing at the round headlights) and more high-tech (pointing at the rectangular lights),” Hunter tells us.

The “Land Cruiser” trim is the highest regular trim for the model, and while the First Edition (that uses the round headlights) technically tops the lineup now, that model won’t be around for very long being limited to just 5,000 total units. Since the “Land Cruiser” trim is packed full of all the tech and luxury options on offer, Hunter and the team wanted to offer those buyers a more modern and high-tech look. On the other hand, Toyota thinks a lot of its enthusiast audience will relish in the old-style round design. This way, you appeal to traditionalists and new buyers alike. And who doesn’t love choice?

Of course, the hole in that theory is that the 1958 is inferior to the Land Cruiser trim off-road since it lacks key features like the disconnecting sway bar, the bigger tires, off-road drive mode selector and more. Even at launch, though, Toyota is already promising a bevy of off-road accessories and options for buyers. The list of Toyota “Geniune Accessories” and “Associated Accessory Products” is already over 100, so you’ll be able to improve the performance of your Land Cruiser off-road if you just gotta have those round headlights, but still want max performance.

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