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Well it's an exciting week in the life of this project. Around 18 months ago I decided that I wanted to take a bit of a deviation from keeping the car stock, and look into options around bucket seats. Although I want to ensure that I can always revert the car exactly to stock, I felt that bucket seats would provide a significant improvement to the driving experience of the car. I find I move around a fair bit in the standard sports seats, so wanted something that would hold me better. I looked into many options for seats, and fairly quickly zeroed in on the Cobra Nogaros. I was keen though to keep the look of the seats as in keeping and period correct as possible so I reached out early last year to Cobra to enquire about custom upholstery with Alcantara and laser fabric to replicate the genuine CSL seats. I was pretty excited to hear that they were working on the Munich Edition Nogaros (which were released later that year). Unfortunately the other key requirement I had is that I didn't want to have to go through the process of getting a cert. I spent quite a bit of time trying to work out whether there was a path to that using OE sliders, Brey-Krauss (or similar) mounts and Cobra Nogaros. Slid all the way forward you get very close to a 300mm gap, but the other key requirement that the sliding mechanism be accessible to the rear passenger was going to be hard to achieve (and pretty much impossible without going down the cert path). As a result, when the Munich Edition Nogaros were released I ultimately didn't pull the trigger (although I still think they're a cool option) There was of course one other possible option which met all of my exacting requirements... I'm now the proud owner of a pair of genuine CSL seats 😍 These particular seats came out of a low mileage car and have sat in storage for the last 10 years, so as a result are in amazing condition considering they are 20 years old. I only picked them up last night, and probably won't have time until the weekend to get them into the car, but I'll certainly be updating here when I do!

So I've got a few things going on that are related, and thought I would start a new thread to capture them. Changing out the saggy cloth door cards to leather items Changing the grey interior pillars and roof liner etc to grey / black Making the rear parcel tray black again Installing a new Alpine single DIN head unit in BMW centre mounted bracket Installing new Kicker KS series speakers all around (just front and rear in stock locations) Painting the wood trims to something more fancy Maybe getting some fancy pants pedals from Pedal Haus Installing gauge cluster bezels to add a little pizazz Might make a new rev gauge backing so I get to the engines actual redline Carbon roof which replaces the steel with sunroof model (this one has its own thread) So that all being said here are some things done so far. Just getting the speakers mounted up, made some 3D printed adapters from ASA (a bit like ABS).

The speakers that were in there were completely stuffed so I'll not have much of a basis for comparison tbh. The baffles on the factory items were essentially a paste, detached from the cones.

Sharknose 130i

The expression on the owner throughout the video is priceless. I think I know how I would look like when Misha drives our car. Also ridiculous if you look at the fuel gauge when it starts and what if left after the lap. So I think the M5 can only do 4 laps at that rate 🤣

Misha gets some real weird looking owner/passengers. If only the E60 M5 had a DCT and direct injection!

It's back. This time at $29k. https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/4154913564 But for the same money I'd definitely be buying this: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/4152972514

Well unfortunately my [former], and probably the world's most viral 130i is no longer.... New owner unfortunately wrote it off. He had just detailed it too, engine bay looks immaculate. If anyone wants a set of 216s, there you go.... https://www.manheim.co.nz/damaged-vehicles/000000000006666054/2008-bmw-130i-hatch?referringPage=SearchResults