Where to find the VIN on a Toyota Land Cruiser 300 Series

Location 1: the frame stamping inside the right front wheel arch

Toyota’s general-market Land Cruiser 300 Series owner’s manual (publication OM60S14E), which Al-Futtaim Motors, Toyota’s UAE distributor, hosts and which carries notes for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, says: “This number is stamped on the front right frame.” No “on some models” is attached. Toyota’s drawing looks forward past the side step and the mud flap into the front wheel arch: the arrow points to a plate on the frame inside the rear of the arch, behind the tyre and at about the height of its upper half.

On a left-hand-drive car the right is the passenger side. Kneel beside the front passenger door and shine a torch into the back of the arch, past the tyre. Sand, mud and underseal collect there; wipe or brush the plate clean, never scrape it, and photograph all 17 characters.

Location 2: the plate at the base of the windscreen (some models)

The manual adds: “On some models, this number is also on the top left of the instrument panel.” Toyota’s drawing views the car from the front left, and its arrow points to a plate lying at the foot of the windscreen beside the near windscreen pillar: the driver’s side of a left-hand-drive car. Read it through the glass. Toyota UAE’s recall page also tells owners they can find the VIN on the windscreen. Because the manual says “some models”, a 300 Series without this plate is not a warning sign on its own; check the frame and the label instead.

Location 3: the label under the front door striker

Toyota’s manual says the VIN is also on the Certification Regulation label on cars for the GCC countries (Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait), Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and (for petrol cars) Jordan, and on a manufacturer’s label on cars for other markets. On the Certification Regulation label it also shows the year of manufacture and the country of origin. The manual’s text names no pillar, but in Toyota’s drawing the label is on the centre pillar just below the front door’s latch striker, with the front seat to the left of the picture and the rear door’s hinges on the pillar’s far edge: the left-hand side, which is the driver’s side of a UAE car.

The label also carries the model code, which the manual uses to tell versions apart. Write the full model code down with the VIN; recall notices often quote only its first part.

Diesel and Hybrid Land Cruiser 300 Series cars

The manual covers the 3.3-litre F33A-FTV diesel as well as the 3.5-litre and 4.0-litre petrol engines, and its frame and dashboard wording is not split by engine. Its only engine split in the VIN wording concerns Jordan, where it lists a manufacturer’s label on diesel cars and a Certification Regulation label on petrol cars. Toyota UAE’s line-ups list no diesel, so a diesel in the UAE was most likely first sold elsewhere, and the label it carries depends on that market.

No official source we found shows the VIN points of the Land Cruiser Hybrid that Toyota UAE added for 2025, or of a diesel built for a market outside this manual’s coverage: the edition we read has no hybrid powertrain, and a region table in it is dated April 2021. For either car, ask Al-Futtaim Toyota, with the chassis number from the Mulkiya (registration card), where the VIN should appear, and for a diesel ask for the import papers too.

Reading a Land Cruiser 300 Series VIN

Toyota UAE describes the VIN as a 17-character code. Its first three characters are the manufacturer identifier, commonly called the world manufacturer identifier (WMI). The register of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) lists 13 identifiers for Toyota Motor Corporation that begin with JT, all recorded with Japan as the country. NHTSA said in a 2024 interpretation letter that a manufacturer identifier need not show where a car was built, so read the first character as a region code, never as the car’s origin or market.

NHTSA’s free decoder lists no Toyota Land Cruiser for the 2022 and 2023 model years, and the Land Cruiser it lists from 2024 is the US car that Toyota’s releases describe as a 2.4-litre four-cylinder hybrid, which Toyota’s global release calls the 250 Series. Toyota did not sell the 300 Series in the US, so an error, or a 250 Series result, from a US-style decoder says nothing about whether a 300 Series VIN is genuine.

The rules that fix a check digit in position 9, the model year in position 10 and the plant in position 11 come from Part 565, a US regulation. No official source we found says which manufacturer identifier a Land Cruiser 300 Series carries or how Toyota codes the rest of its VIN. Do not date the car from the 10th character or reject it over a failed check-digit test; read the year of manufacture on the Certification Regulation label and ask Al-Futtaim Toyota to confirm what the VIN says about the car.

Why the frame, the label and the Mulkiya must agree

Ownership is registered against the VIN, which Toyota’s manual names as the car’s legal identifier, and on the Mulkiya Toyota UAE says it appears as the chassis number. So the frame stamping, the label and, where fitted, the windscreen plate must show the same 17 characters as the Mulkiya. Then compare the label’s year of manufacture with the model year in the advert: a car built late in one year is often sold as the next model year, so one year apart is normal and more needs an explanation.

The engine number is a different number. Toyota stamps it on the engine block, in a different place on the 1GR-FE, the V35A-FTS and the F33A-FTV. Gulf News reported in October 2026 that Al-Futtaim’s crankshaft-bearing campaign for cars built in 2023 and 2024 replaces the engine free where needed, so a 300 Series can legitimately have a newer engine than its first service records show. Ask for the work order that records the new engine number.

Hold off on a Land Cruiser 300 Series if the inside of the right front wheel arch has been freshly undersealed or filled around the frame plate, if the stamped characters look uneven or re-cut, or if the label under the striker is missing, lifting at the corners or cleaner than the paint around it. Have the car raised so the arch can be cleaned and photographed, and tell the seller the deal waits until the registering authority has seen the numbers.

If a Land Cruiser 300 Series VIN is unreadable or does not match

No official UAE source we found describes how a Land Cruiser with an unreadable frame stamping, or a label that disagrees with the Mulkiya, is put right, so we cannot quote a procedure. In Dubai, the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) names a “Technical Inspection for data verification” among its inspection services, one it says needs no appointment, without saying what it checks, and lets an owner appeal an inspection result to its Technical Inspection Committee. Before paying, ask the traffic authority of the emirate where the car is registered, or the police, whether the car can be transferred as its numbers read, and never let anyone re-stamp the frame or print a new label outside that process.

US vehicle-identification and certification-label rules do not apply to a 300 Series, which Toyota never sold in the US. A Land Cruiser with a US history and a 2024 or later model year is a 250 Series, according to Toyota’s US and global releases, so a car offered as a US-import 300 Series needs its papers explained before anything else.

Buying an imported car in the UAE