Removing the rear seat headrests for better visibility

Cover the holes with 3/8 inch nylon hole plugs available in black or white from Lowe's or Ace Hardware.

 

Why?

 

I'd say mostly for aesthetics, though there is a slight chance something could get stuck in there.

 

Have kids?

 

That was a consideration, but idle hands can also remove the plugs.

 

The plugs have thin flush edges which make them quite difficult to remove. Also, the side adjusting and retaining button must also be depressed at the same time.

 

Wow.

Are the locking mechanisms compatible? The non-US ones are retractable, with a few positions, like the front headrests. I guess the US ones would still use the same notch mechanism to hold them in, although it looks like you wouldn't be raising them.

 

Crap. I copy pasted the wrong section of my interior conversion doc(I researched this all months ago for the same reason you're doing it). Sorry about that.

Here are the correct part numbers for the smaller headrests:

71940-47710-C5 - Black leather with red stitching (XSE, XSE+)
71940-47710-C6 - Black leather with silver stitching (XLE/LTD)
71940-47750-C2 - Black cloth with red stitching (SE)
71940-47750-C3 - Black cloth (LE)
71940-47730-C3 - Black (not exactly sure about this one - minimal description in the parts catalog)
No gray interior in Japan

¥17,300 each = ~$112.50

 

I corrected the part numbers(I accidentally originally pasted the US headrests, not the Japanese ones), but I did confirm the locking mechanisms are the same. The channels in the seats that the headrests slide into are the same part numbers in all Priuses worldwide. Well, there are actually four different ones, but they are only cosmetically different as they're linked to each interior color/material(black leather, black fabric, gray leather, gray fabric).

And the seat frames are the same as well. At least the 40 of the 60/40 split is the same. The 60 is different but only because the Japanese 60 has a separate headrest while the US 60 has the headrest built in.