How this is worked out
Every feature in our registry is valued on one of two bases. Some are factory-only — a sunroof, ventilated seats, ADAS — where the number is what the capability is worth, because you cannot sensibly add it later. The other 31 are retrofit: a touchscreen, a reversing camera, alloy wheels, a better sound system. For those, the valuation is anchored to what the aftermarket actually charges — which makes it directly comparable to what the variant upgrade charges.
Below are the 24 variant upgrades where almost everything you gain is retrofittable, and the variant costs extra at least half as much again as buying it yourself would. “Fit it yourself” is each part's aftermarket price, the same on every car: unlike our valuations elsewhere it is not scaled by segment, because a shop charges the same for a dashcam whatever it goes in. Where a part replaces a smaller one, such as 17-inch wheels in place of 16-inch, it is the difference between the two, and the row gives the outright price. The list is sorted by what the upgrade asks over the kit, widest first.
Those prices are our own registry valuations, not one shop's quote. Each part links to its own page, which gives the figure, the reasoning behind it and the date it was last reviewed (between 10 September 2026 and 9 October 2026). Aftermarket prices for the same part spread widely, so a quote you get may sit either side of ours. Before acting on any row, read the four reasons not to below: warranty, fit, unpriced trim and resale.
Left out: the Toyota Fortuner 4x2 → Legender 4x2 (Diesel automatic), the Toyota Fortuner 4x4 → Legender 4x4 (Diesel manual 4WD), where the kit you could fit is under a tenth of the price and the rest is styling or finish we do not price.
The upgrades you could mostly buy yourself
Four reasons not to do this
This is arithmetic, not advice, and the arithmetic leaves things out.
- A retrofit is rarely as neat. A factory touchscreen is wired into the car's own buses and sits in a moulding made for it. An aftermarket one usually does not talk to the steering controls, and it shows.
- Some of it affects your warranty. Anything spliced into the wiring can give a dealer a reason to decline an electrical claim. Ask before, not after.
- The variant may carry things we do not price. Better seat fabric, extra sound deadening, a different grille — real, and not in our registry, so they count as zero here and are not zero to you.
- Resale reads the trim name, not the boot. A used-car buyer pays for the badge on the tailgate; your fitted camera does not appear in the listing.
Where the upgrade also includes something marked as factory-only in the last column, the calculation stops being close — that part you cannot buy afterwards at any price. How each feature is valued sets out which is which, and why.
Two pages look at the same upgrades from the other side: the variant upgrades that give back the most, and what the top variant of each car adds over the base.