Hey Folks,

The rear trim piece I ordered, after being back-ordered, has finally come in. I had hell of a time removing the cig lighter sockets from the old plastic trim which you can see in the third picture. I destroyed the old plastic trim, oh well.

It cost me $83.25 after the BMA CCA discount and after sales tax. The part numbers for the anthracite trim are (2 choices):
Piece with cutouts for rear seat heating/cig lighters: 51 16 7 141 074
A solid piece of trim, no cutouts at all: 51 16 7 153 768
So if you don't have rear seat heating you have to get the solid piece and loose the cig lights all together. Sorry, I don't know the part numbers for the poplar versions. I'm sure they're available if these are available.

Pics:

Pre-installation comparison:
http://www.bmw545.com/pics/reartrim1.jpg

The old trim on top which I cracked the plastic trying to take out the cig lighters... it took my engineering skills almost an hour to get this done. LOL. :rolleyes:
http://www.bmw545.com/pics/reartrim2.jpg

Finished product, looks much better:
http://www.bmw545.com/pics/reartrim3.jpg

And finally just a picture of the rear in general. The new trim fits in nicely. The car should come this way from the factory. I'm sure eventually it will, if not already.
http://www.bmw545.com/pics/reartrim4.jpg


And here's a pic of the solid piece from someone elses car for those interested in that:
http://www.bmw545.com/pics/consoletrim1.jpg

Hey, that's great to see. I gues you could also get the one with the cig lighters and if you don't have the heated rear seats, get some covers for the openings.....

Anybody have the poplar part numbers for the trim with cig and seat heater cutouts?

lomag,

did they mention that their might be plug covers for the openings for the heated seat switches?

I did not ask but I doubt it. The whole purpose of getting the new trim, besides to look better, was to get rid of those ugly pre-made cutouts in the plastic. I was kind of surprised to find that they didn't have a piece with only the cig lighter cutouts as I'd imagine that's a much more popular combination than cig+rear heater cutouts. Ask your dealer to do a search, maybe they'll find something!

Excellent writeup, Mark.

That looks a WHOLE LOT better! I will talk to my parts guy about getting the Poplar insert that includes the button cutouts for the rear seat heaters, even though I don't have the rear heated seats. I'd rather have something there than nothing at all.

Worse comes to worst, and I'll just lose the back-seat cig-lighters and get the solid piece.

-MrB

That does look good, but don't know if I'd spend $80 on it.

My E60 doesn't come with rear cigarette lighters and rear seat heating but instead of a blank/solid piece of plastic like in the photo. Mine has a compartment/storage area if I remember correctly.

How many different variations can there be? ;)

LOOKS GOOD. How do I order one?

Thanks for the great post Lomag.

I think I'll probably get the poplar version once the part numbers are known. (No real rush for me so I probably will wait until someone else discovers the correct P/N's.)

For now, the burning question is -- do you have to be an admin to post multiple pics on one post or am I missing something obvious??