Electric vs Manual Side Mirrors for the LandCruiser 70 Series: Why Upgrade

For decades the Toyota LandCruiser 70 Series left the factory with basic manual side mirrors. They are honest, simple, and unbreakable, and on a working ute that counts for something. But anyone who drives a 70 Series every day knows the compromise: adjusting the passenger-side mirror means leaning across the cabin, the heads are prone to buzzing on corrugations, and once a mirror is nudged out of position there is no quick way to bring it back. This guide makes the case for upgrading to electric side mirrors honestly. It explains what changes when you can adjust both mirrors from the driver's seat, walks through the heated versus non-heated decision, and sets out why a kit built around the genuine Toyota mirror with a plug-and-play harness is a very different proposition to a universal aftermarket swap.

The Manual Mirror Problem on the 70 Series

The standard 70 Series side mirror is adjusted by hand. To set the driver's-side mirror you wind down the window and reach out, or work the head with your fingers through the gap. To set the passenger's-side mirror you have to reach right across the cabin, and on a wide vehicle like the 70 Series that is an awkward stretch that most people cannot make properly from the driver's seat at all. The practical result is that the passenger mirror gets set once and rarely touched again, even when the load, the trailer, or the driver changes.

There are three recurring frustrations that owners report with the factory manual setup:

• Reaching across the cabin. Adjusting the far mirror is a two-stop job: pull over, get out or lean across, nudge, get back in, check, repeat. It discourages drivers from setting the mirror correctly for the conditions in front of them.
• Awkward passenger-side adjustment. Because the passenger mirror is the hardest to reach, it is the one most likely to be left in a compromised position, which is exactly the mirror you most need when merging, towing, or reversing a trailer.
• Vibration and drift. Manual mirror heads can buzz on corrugated dirt and over time can drift out of position, so a mirror you set in the morning is not necessarily where you left it after a day on rough roads.

None of this makes the manual mirror unsafe in isolation. It makes it inconvenient in a way that quietly erodes how well you can actually see down the side of the vehicle, which is the whole point of a mirror.

What Electric Side Mirrors Change

Electric side mirrors put the adjustment under a small switch on the door or dash. You select the left or right mirror and move the glass with a toggle, all without leaving your seat or taking your eyes far from the road ahead. That single change fixes most of what is annoying about the manual setup, and it brings a couple of genuine safety benefits with it.

• Adjust from the driver's seat. Both mirrors, including the far passenger side, come into reach for the first time. You can fine-tune the view for a trailer, a roof load, or a different driver in seconds, at the lights or before you pull out.
• Repeatable positioning. Because adjustment is quick and from the seat, drivers actually keep the mirrors set correctly rather than leaving them wherever they last ended up. If a mirror is knocked, you bring it straight back.
• Better rear vision when it matters. A mirror that is easy to set is a mirror that is set well. The benefit shows up most when towing, when reversing a trailer, and when merging on a highway, the moments where a properly aimed side mirror does real work.

The comparison below sets the two systems side by side across the things owners actually care about.

Heated vs Non-Heated: Which Variant Do You Need?

The PVS kit comes in two variants: No Heating at A$849 and Heated at A$949. The heating element sits behind the mirror glass and clears frost, fog, and condensation electrically, the same way a rear demister clears the back window. The A$100 difference buys you that capability, and whether it is worth it comes down honestly to where and how you drive.

Why Genuine Toyota and Plug-and-Play Matters

There are cheaper ways to get powered mirrors onto a 70 Series, and most of them involve a universal aftermarket mirror and a handful of guesswork wiring. The reason the PVS kit costs what it does is that it avoids that entirely. It is built around the genuine Toyota mirror unit, designed and manufactured in Japan, the same mirror Toyota fits to the models that came with electric mirrors from the factory. That matters in three concrete ways.

• Fitment. The mirror is engineered for the 70 Series door, so it bolts in where the factory mirror lived and lines up the way it should, rather than a universal head that has to be packed, drilled, or fudged to sit straight.
• Reliability. A genuine Toyota mirror motor and housing is built to the standard the rest of the vehicle is, which is the right benchmark for a part that lives outside in the weather and takes corrugations every day.
• OEM look. The finished result reads as factory, not as an add-on. That is worth real money at resale and it simply looks right on the vehicle.

The other half of the kit is the wiring. PVS supplies a dedicated plug-and-play harness that uses original Toyota-style plugs, so it integrates seamlessly with the factory loom. There is no messy splicing into wires that were never meant to carry the mirror circuit, and no universal wiring guesswork about which wire does what. The harness is made for this job, on this vehicle, and that is the difference between an installation that behaves like factory and one that becomes an intermittent fault waiting to happen.

Fitment and Install Overview

The kit is designed to retrofit electric mirrors into the factory doors of the 70 Series. The genuine Toyota mirrors take the place of the manual units, and the dedicated harness connects the mirror motors to the vehicle's wiring using the original Toyota-style plugs, so the integration follows the factory layout rather than working around it. One of the strengths of this approach is reach: because the kit is built to retrofit into the standard door, it brings modern electric mirror functionality even to the earliest 70 Series models, the ones that never had any factory provision for powered mirrors at all.

At a high level the job involves removing the existing manual mirrors, fitting the genuine Toyota electric mirrors in their place, running the supplied harness, and connecting the switch so the mirrors can be adjusted from the driver's seat. The plug-and-play design keeps that work clean and reversible, but it is still an electrical and trim job on the doors.

A Note on ADR and Rear Vision

Side mirrors are part of how your vehicle meets its rear-vision requirements, so any change to them needs to keep that view intact. The genuine Toyota mirrors in this kit are equivalent in size and field to a factory electric mirror, which keeps the upgrade firmly in OEM-style territory rather than reducing what the driver can see down the side of the vehicle. The principle to hold onto is simple: mirrors must still meet the rear-vision requirements, and an upgrade should improve how well you can use that view, not compromise it.

For the detail on how side mirrors relate to the Australian Design Rules and rear-vision requirements, see our companion compliance guide, Electric Side Mirrors and ADR Rear Vision, and the broader ADR Compliance hub. These cover what the rules actually require and how a like-for-like genuine mirror upgrade sits against them. As always, confirm anything specific to your build and state with a licensed automotive engineer.

Related Guides and Getting the Kit

If you are weighing up the upgrade, the two resources worth reading alongside this guide are the Electric Side Mirrors and ADR Rear Vision companion guide for the compliance angle, and the ADR Compliance hub for how modifications are assessed in Australia more broadly. Together they cover both halves of the decision: whether the upgrade is worth it for you, and how it sits with the rules.