I visited a junkyard today and walked away confused but with an idea.
I always thought that it was dumb for the fuel release lever be more difficult to reach than the hood release (even though *I* probably open the hood more often than the fuel door, it still seems backwards for the "ordinary" folks).
So as I was browsing the junkyard and looking at a picked over '02, something jumped out at me (not a good thing at junkyards!). The '02 had the fuel release more accessible than the hood release! Like it should be, IMO.
I thought of taking that panel and adapting it to mine (half my truck is converted to '99 + anyway, why stop now), but the panel was gray and my interior is oak. So I took a pic of the back of the panel, just to remember it:
This is where it gets weird. I stumbled across a '97, and looked at its panel, which was just like mine (fuel release out of the way, hood release very prominent):
Flipped the panel over, and saw that it looks identical to the '02, just with the release levers in different locations:
So I realized that the two panels were identical, just had the levers swapped. I got home and confirmed with the owners manual that for the '97, this was the correct orientation - hood release prominent, fuel release tucked away.
So my question is, did Toyota swap these two levers in the '02, or did the previous owner of the '02 decide to swap the levers (which I think is brilliant, and is no more than 5 minutes of work)? Regardless, I think this is next on my to-do list - and at zero cost, how refreshing!