Toyota's 'Factory Upgrade' Program In Japan Lets You Pay For New Features In Your Older Car

The idea of "planned obsolescence" — that is, companies deliberately limiting the lifespan or repairability of a product so you'll spend money replacing it — should be familiar to anyone who's ever felt their iPhone slow down just as Apple unveils a new one. Retrofitting existing products to keep up with the new stuff isn't really part of the modern capitalism playbook, which is why Toyota's new "Factory Upgrade" program in Japan feels so refreshing to learn about. 

Factory Upgrade is pretty much what it sounds like: factory-developed, dealer-installed "aftermarket" options available for Toyota or Lexus cars you already own. As of now, the models you can do this on aren't actually that old (the oldest car on the list is a 2004 Hiace), and judging from a cursory click around, whole new infotainment systems are rare. You can get the 12.3-inch touchscreen fitted to your current-gen Prius for the Japanese yen equivalent of $1,060 if you opted for the base screen when you bought the car, though. It's mostly a lot of leather steering wheels, extra ambient lighting, remote start retrofits, and converting USB-A ports to USB-C. The only things available for the Lexus LC, by the way, are remote A/C start and orange brake calipers.

Some interesting ones I found include a $315 package that adds more noise dampening to your Noah/Voxy kei van and a $165 package of stick-on, underbody "Shibetsu Fins" for your fourth-gen Prius that apparently improve driving stability. The prevalence of leather steering wheels on the upgrade list of a lot of the program's older models is interesting, though. Personally, one of my least favorite parts of buying a used car over a new one is the steering wheel that's often gross and shiny after years of use. For someone picking up an older Toyota in Japan, spending $300 or so to have the thing you hold when you drive look and smell factory fresh feels like a decent trade.

In any case, the selection here might not be where we sort of hoped it'd be — wake me up when they're fitting modern Toyota touchscreens with wireless Apple CarPlay on 2003 Tacomas — and Factory Upgrade is strictly Japan-only for now. But the fact that Toyota does this sort of thing at all deserves mild applause. Although, given Toyota's reputation for building cars that last hella miles, perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised.