North American cars received the transponder key system / immobilizer in 1996 or 1997. I believe the illuminated ring around the key switch disappeared at the same time to make room for the transponder antenna. I know that my 2000 does not have the light around the key barrel.
The switch assembly part number changed during production so the later switch assembly may not have the bulb holder in it which makes retrofitting the earlier translucent ring pointless. If it does, then you may be able to retrofit the ring. I think the bigger issue may be where do you put the antenna ring once you remove it from the switch assembly. There is not exactly an abundance of room around the switch assembly. Passive RFID tags like the one in the key need to be blasted/energized by radio waves for them to activate and transmit back the immobilizer code. The antenna ring does the blasting and receiving of the code. Given the health paranoia around electromagnetic radiation, the activating radio waves are generally pretty low power for this sort of device which means that the antenna has to be close to the tag, probably less than 10 cm. The other complication is that the immobilizer antenna appears to be an H field loop antenna. If so, that means the antenna probably needs to retain its original orientation to the chip in the key to read it. You may not be able to jam the antenna into any convenient space and still have it activate and read the key.
If you absolutely must have the illuminated ring, you could always deactivate the immobilizer. Requires some soldering skills. Somebody was selling a daughter board that you could use to replace the immobilizer daughterboard in the ECU. The replacement board generated a permissive for the ECU in the absence of getting a permissive from the immobilizer. It was the cheap-ass solution for replacing an ECU and not going through the whole recoding process. Not recommended.
