Hello all,
I've become somewhat of a collector of Individual interior trim sets for the E46 over the years and have had a ton of fun doing it! Little else has such effect on the interior besides a complete seat/door-card swap. I just wanted to reach out and see some of your opinions on what trim sets you would deem very desirable. I searched around and couldn't find a comprehensive pictorial for E46 interiors, but found one for the E39:
http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=769012
I was thinking of perhaps making a thread for the E46? For now I'll only include the Individual trim sets for sake of time (hey, my shift starts at 6:00a :facepalm
.
Personally I love the look of ZHP silver cube trim in a dark interior, and of course some of the Individual trims look amazing.
In my opinion, birch wood takes the cake and I have some installed in my car and receive compliments from many of my friends and passengers. I've also seen competition package aluminum trim (only available on coupe) floating around.
During my experience I've also ran across several trim sets I have never even heard of, maybe someone will be able to identify them? I checked realoem's individual section but the images didn't correlate:
Smoke Grey Poplar??? I thought this was only available for the coupe in the BMW Lifestyle collection but I saw this set in E46 sedan configuration:
Olive
Ruby Chestnut
Red Poplar
Arizona Sun
Natural Poplar (excuse the E39 pic! I'll replace this if someone can direct me to one)
Competition Trim (coupe only)
Light Birch
Birch Anthracite
And just for fun.... Some side-by-side shots of light (cue Star Wars light side theme song...) vs dark (darth vader!) birch I took: Yes. For some weird reason I picture a lightsaber battle in my head when I look at these sets.
So here's my small start of making a comprehensive BMW E46 interior list! Please feel free to contribute!!!
I'm slightly bias.... and prefer the birch wood over the others, with the ZHP silver cube trim following closely behind. It's very difficult to photograph birch anthracite wood. Individual trims are very hard to come by... Post some pics and feel free to share the stories behind them! Would someone also verify smoke grey poplar for me?
If I missed any individuals, please add them here. I've had the pleasure of handling eukalyptus trim (coupe only) too. From looking around the forum, I see that brushed aluminum seems to be the "standard" trim that's fairly desirable giving the interior a clean look. I very much like it as well. As for myself, I've handled quite a few sets of trim - mostly exclusively light or dark birch as I don't have too much of an interest in the other individual trim sets. I actually prefer the ZHP cube and brushed aluminum trim to many of them... Plus this is rather one expensive tertiary hobby (ZHP, Motorcycles come first!) but that's just my personal taste. Maybe I'll pick up some olive next if I can source one? I hope this will be a helpful resource for those like myself.
I've become somewhat of a collector of Individual interior trim sets for the E46 over the years and have had a ton of fun doing it! Little else has such effect on the interior besides a complete seat/door-card swap. I just wanted to reach out and see some of your opinions on what trim sets you would deem very desirable. I searched around and couldn't find a comprehensive pictorial for E46 interiors, but found one for the E39:
http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=769012
I was thinking of perhaps making a thread for the E46? For now I'll only include the Individual trim sets for sake of time (hey, my shift starts at 6:00a :facepalm
.Personally I love the look of ZHP silver cube trim in a dark interior, and of course some of the Individual trims look amazing.
In my opinion, birch wood takes the cake and I have some installed in my car and receive compliments from many of my friends and passengers. I've also seen competition package aluminum trim (only available on coupe) floating around.
During my experience I've also ran across several trim sets I have never even heard of, maybe someone will be able to identify them? I checked realoem's individual section but the images didn't correlate:
Smoke Grey Poplar??? I thought this was only available for the coupe in the BMW Lifestyle collection but I saw this set in E46 sedan configuration:
Olive
Ruby Chestnut
Red Poplar
Arizona Sun
Natural Poplar (excuse the E39 pic! I'll replace this if someone can direct me to one)
Competition Trim (coupe only)
Light Birch
Birch Anthracite
And just for fun.... Some side-by-side shots of light (cue Star Wars light side theme song...) vs dark (darth vader!) birch I took: Yes. For some weird reason I picture a lightsaber battle in my head when I look at these sets.
So here's my small start of making a comprehensive BMW E46 interior list! Please feel free to contribute!!!
I'm slightly bias.... and prefer the birch wood over the others, with the ZHP silver cube trim following closely behind. It's very difficult to photograph birch anthracite wood. Individual trims are very hard to come by... Post some pics and feel free to share the stories behind them! Would someone also verify smoke grey poplar for me?
If I missed any individuals, please add them here. I've had the pleasure of handling eukalyptus trim (coupe only) too. From looking around the forum, I see that brushed aluminum seems to be the "standard" trim that's fairly desirable giving the interior a clean look. I very much like it as well. As for myself, I've handled quite a few sets of trim - mostly exclusively light or dark birch as I don't have too much of an interest in the other individual trim sets. I actually prefer the ZHP cube and brushed aluminum trim to many of them... Plus this is rather one expensive tertiary hobby (ZHP, Motorcycles come first!) but that's just my personal taste. Maybe I'll pick up some olive next if I can source one? I hope this will be a helpful resource for those like myself.
